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<tr><td><p style="text-align:center">Download as <a href="shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight.pdf">PDF</a>, zipped <a href="shorts/Blindsight.zip">HTML</a>, <a href="http://www.realityloop.com/">Brian Gilbert</a>'s <a href="shorts/Blindsight.pdb">Mobipocket mix</a> or <a href="shorts/Blindsight.prc">John Joseph Adams</a>'s (with thanks to both), <a href="http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight-v1.01-formatted-by-Ellen-Herzfeld.epub">Ellen Herzfeld's e-pub edition</a> (more thanks!), or just read online (below)<br><br>
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<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align:center">
<FONT SIZE=5 STYLE="font-size: 20pt">Blindsight</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
<FONT SIZE=4 STYLE="font-size: 16pt">Peter Watts</FONT><br><br>


<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<br><br>For Lisa<BR><br>
If we're not in pain, we're not alive.
<br><br></P>
<DIV ID="Section1" DIR="LTR">
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>

<P LANG="" STYLE="margin-left: 0.17in; font-weight: medium">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Prologue">Prologue</a></P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Theseus">Theseus</a></P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Rorschach">Rorschach</a></P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Charybdis">Charybdis</a></P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Acknowledgments">Acknowledgments</a></P>
<P LANG="" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a href="#Notes">Notes and References</a></P>
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<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;This
is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of
imagining what is, in fact, real.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Philip
Gourevitch</FONT></FONT></P>
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<BR>
</P>
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<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;You
will die like a dog for no good reason.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Ernest
Hemingway</FONT></FONT></P>
<br><br><br><a name="Prologue"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a>


<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Prologue</H2>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Try
to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's
just a dream.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Ted
Bundy</FONT></FONT></P>
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<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It didn't start out here. Not with the scramblers or <I>Rorschach</I>,
not with Big Ben or <I>Theseus</I> or the vampires. Most people
would say it started with the Fireflies, but they'd be wrong. It
<I>ended</I> with all those things.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For me, it began with Robert Paglino.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At the age of eight, he was my best and only friend. We were fellow
outcasts, bound by complementary misfortune. Mine was developmental.
His was genetic: an uncontrolled genotype that left him predisposed
to nearsightedness, acne, and (as it later turned out) a
susceptibility to narcotics. His parents had never had him
optimized. Those few TwenCen relics who still believed in God also
held that one shouldn't try to improve upon His handiwork. So
although both of us <I>could</I> have been repaired, only one of us
<I>had</I> been.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I arrived at the playground to find Pag the center of attention for
some half-dozen kids, those lucky few in front punching him in the
head, the others making do with taunts of <I>mongrel</I> and <I>polly</I>
while waiting their turn. I watched him raise his arms, almost
hesitantly, to ward off the worst of the blows. I could see into his
head better than I could see into my own; he was scared that his
attackers might think those hands were coming up to hit <I>back</I>,
that they'd read it as an act of defiance and hurt him even more.
Even then, at the tender age of eight and with half my mind gone, I
was becoming a superlative observer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I didn't know what to do.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I hadn't seen much of Pag lately. I was pretty sure he'd been
avoiding me. Still, when your best friend's in trouble you help out,
right? Even if the odds are impossible—and how many
eight-year-olds would go up against six bigger kids for a sandbox
buddy?—at least you call for backup. Flag a sentry.
<I>Something</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I just stood there. I didn't even especially <I>want</I> to help
him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That didn't make sense. Even if he hadn't been my best friend, I
should at least have empathized. I'd suffered less than Pag in the
way of overt violence; my seizures tended to keep the other kids at a
distance, scared <I>them</I> even as they incapacitated <I>me</I>.
Still. I was no stranger to the taunts and insults, or the foot that
appears from nowhere to trip you up en route from A to B. I knew how
that felt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Or I had, once.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But that part of me had been cut out along with the bad wiring. I
was still working up the algorithms to get it back, still learning by
observation. Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their
midst. Every child knows that much instinctively. Maybe I should
just let that process unfold, maybe I shouldn't try to mess with
nature. Then again, Pag's parents hadn't messed with nature, and
look what it got them: a son curled up in the dirt while a bunch of
engineered superboys kicked in his ribs.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In the end, propaganda worked where empathy failed. Back then I
didn't so much think as observe, didn't deduce so much as
<I>remember</I>—and what I remembered was a thousand
inspirational stories lauding anyone who ever stuck up for the
underdog.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I picked up a rock the size of my fist and hit two of Pag's
assailants across the backs of their heads before anyone even knew I
was in the game.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A third, turning to face the new threat, took a blow to the face that
audibly crunched the bones of his cheek. I remember wondering why I
didn't take any satisfaction from that sound, why it meant nothing
beyond the fact I had one less opponent to worry about.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The rest of them ran at the sight of blood. One of the braver
promised me I was dead, shouted &quot;<I>Fucking zombie!</I>&quot;
over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Three decades it took, to see the irony in that remark.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Two of the enemy twitched at my feet. I kicked one in the head until
it stopped moving, turned to the other. Something grabbed my arm and
I swung without thinking, without <I>looking</I> until Pag yelped and
ducked out of reach.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh,&quot; I said. &quot;Sorry.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One thing lay motionless. The other moaned and held its head and
curled up in a ball.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh<I> shit</I>,&quot; Pag panted. Blood coursed unheeded from
his nose and splattered down his shirt. His cheek was turning blue
and yellow. &quot;Oh<I> shit </I>oh shit oh <I>shit...</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought of something to say. &quot;You all right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh <I>shit</I>, you—I mean, you <I>never</I>...&quot; He
wiped his mouth. Blood smeared the back of his hand. &quot;Oh <I>man</I>
are we in trouble.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They started it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, but you—I mean, <I>look</I> at them!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The moaning thing was crawling away on all fours. I wondered how
long it would be before it found reinforcements. I wondered if I
should kill it before then.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You'da <I>never</I> done that before,&quot; Pag said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Before the operation, he meant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I actually did feel something then—faint, distant, but
unmistakable. I felt angry. &quot;They <I>started</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag backed away, eyes wide. &quot;What are you <I>doing</I>? Put
that <I>down</I>!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd raised my fists. I didn't remember doing that. I unclenched
them. It took a while. I had to look at my hands very hard for a
long, long time.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The rock dropped to the ground, blood-slick and glistening.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I was trying to help.&quot; I didn't understand why he
couldn't <I>see </I>that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're, you're not the <I>same</I>,&quot; Pag said from a safe
distance. &quot;You're not even <I>Siri</I> any more.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I am too. Don't be a fuckwad.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>They cut out your brain</I>!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only half. For the ep—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I <I>know</I> for the epilepsy! You think I don't know? But
you were <I>in</I> that half—or, like, <I>part</I> of you
was...&quot; He struggled with the words, with the concept behind
them. &quot;And now you're <I>different</I>. It's like, your mom
and dad <I>murdered</I> you—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My mom and dad,&quot; I said, suddenly quiet, &quot;saved my
life. I would have <I>died</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think you <I>did</I> die,&quot; said my best and only friend.
&quot;I think <I>Siri</I> died, they scooped him out and threw him
away and you're some whole other kid that just, just <I>grew back</I>
out of what was left. You're not the <I>same</I>. Ever since.
You're not the <I>same</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I still don't know if Pag really knew what he was saying. Maybe his
mother had just pulled the plug on whatever game he'd been wired into
for the previous eighteen hours, forced him outside for some fresh
air. Maybe, after fighting pod people in gamespace, he couldn't help
but see them everywhere. Maybe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But you could make a case for what he said. I do remember Helen
telling me (and <I>telling</I> me) how difficult it was to adjust.
<I>Like you had a whole new personality</I>, she said, and why not?
There's a reason they call it <I>radical</I> hemispherectomy: half
the brain thrown out with yesterday's krill, the remaining half
press-ganged into double duty. Think of all the rewiring that one
lonely hemisphere must have struggled with as it tried to take up the
slack. It turned out okay, obviously. The brain's a very flexible
piece of meat; it took some doing, but it adapted. <I>I</I> adapted.
Still. Think of all that must have been squeezed out, deformed,
<I>reshaped</I> by the time the renovations were through. You could
argue that I'm a different person than the one who used to occupy
this body.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grownups showed up eventually, of course. Medicine was bestowed,
ambulances called. Parents were outraged, diplomatic volleys
exchanged, but it's tough to drum up neighborhood outrage on behalf
of your injured baby when playground surveillance from three angles
shows the little darling—and five of his buddies— kicking
in the ribs of a disabled boy. My mother, for her part, recycled
the usual complaints about problem children and absentee fathers—Dad
was off again in some other hemisphere—but the dust settled
pretty quickly. Pag and I even stayed friends, after a short hiatus
that reminded us both of the limited social prospects open to
schoolyard rejects who don't stick together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I survived that and a million other childhood experiences. I grew
up and I got along. I learned to fit in. I observed, recorded,
derived the algorithms and mimicked appropriate behaviors. Not much
of it was—heartfelt, I guess the word is. I had friends and
enemies, like everyone else. I chose them by running through
checklists of behaviors and circumstances compiled from years of
observation.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I may have grown up distant but I grew up <I>objective</I>, and I
have Robert Paglino to thank for that. His seminal observation set
everything in motion. It led me into Synthesis, fated me to our
disastrous encounter with the Scramblers, spared me the worse fate
befalling Earth. Or the better one, I suppose, depending on your
point of view. Point of view <I>matters</I>: I see that now, blind,
talking to myself, trapped in a coffin falling past the edge of the
solar system. I see it for the first time since some beaten bloody
friend on a childhood battlefield convinced me to throw my own point
of view away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He may have been wrong. <I>I</I> may have been. But that, that
<I>distance</I>—that chronic sense of being an alien among your
own kind—it's not entirely a bad thing.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It came in especially handy when the real aliens came calling.</P>
<br><br><br><a name="Theseus"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a><br><br><br>
<DIV ID="Section9" DIR="LTR">
<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Theseus</H2>
</DIV>
<br><br><br>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Blood
makes noise.&quot; —Susanne Vega</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you are Siri Keeton:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You wake in an agony of resurrection, gasping after a
record-shattering bout of sleep apnea spanning one hundred forty
days. You can feel your blood, syrupy with dobutamine and
leuenkephalin, forcing its way through arteries shriveled by months
on standby. The body <I>inflates</I> in painful increments: blood
vessels dilate; flesh peels apart from flesh; ribs crack in your ears
with sudden unaccustomed flexion. Your joints have seized up through
disuse. You're a stick-man, frozen in some perverse <I>rigor vitae</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You'd scream if you had the breath.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was <I>normal</I>
for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation.
They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if
that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn
of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all—
raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched
together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of
sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this
very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it
too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space.
Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The pain begins, just slightly, to recede. You fire up your inlays
and access your own vitals: it'll be long minutes before your body
responds fully to motor commands, hours before it stops hurting.
The pain's an unavoidable side effect. That's just what happens when
you splice vampire subroutines into Human code. You asked about
painkillers once, but nerve blocks of any kind <I>compromise
metabolic reactivation</I>. Suck it up, soldier.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You wonder if this was how it felt for Chelsea, before the end. But
that evokes a whole other kind of pain, so you block it out and
concentrate on the life pushing its way back into your extremities.
Suffering in silence, you check the logs for fresh telemetry.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You think: <I>That can't be right</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because if it is, you're in the wrong part of the universe. You're
not in the Kuiper Belt where you belong: you're high above the
ecliptic and deep into the Oort, the realm of long-period comets that
only grace the sun every million years or so. You've gone
<I>interstellar</I>, which means (you bring up the system clock)
you've been undead for eighteen hundred days.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You've overslept by almost five years.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The lid of your coffin slides away. Your own cadaverous body
reflects from the mirrored bulkhead opposite, a desiccated lungfish
waiting for the rains. Bladders of isotonic saline cling to its
limbs like engorged antiparasites, like the opposite of leeches. You
remember the needles going in just before you shut down, way back
when your veins were more than dry twisted filaments of beef jerky.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's reflection stares back from his own pod to your immediate
right. His face is as bloodless and skeletal as yours. His wide
sunken eyes jiggle in their sockets as he reacquires his own links,
sensory interfaces so massive that your own off-the-shelf inlays
amount to shadow-puppetry in comparison.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You hear coughing and the rustling of limbs just past line-of-sight,
catch glimpses of reflected motion where the others stir at the edge
of vision.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wha—&quot; Your voice is barely more than a hoarse
whisper. &quot;…happ…?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel works his jaw. Bone cracks audibly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;…Sssuckered,&quot; he hisses.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You haven't even met the aliens yet, and already they're running
rings around you.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So we dragged ourselves back from the dead: five part-time cadavers,
naked, emaciated, barely able to move even in zero gee. We emerged
from our coffins like premature moths ripped from their cocoons,
still half-grub. We were alone and off course and utterly helpless,
and it took a conscious effort to remember: they would never have
risked our lives if we hadn't been essential.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Morning, commissar.&quot; Isaac Szpindel reached one
trembling, insensate hand for the feedback gloves at the base of his
pod. Just past him, Susan James was curled into a loose fetal ball,
murmuring to herselves. Only Amanda Bates, already dressed and
cycling through a sequence of bone-cracking isometrics, possessed
anything approaching mobility. Every now and then she tried bouncing
a rubber ball off the bulkhead; but not even she was up to catching
it on the rebound yet.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The journey had melted us down to a common archetype. James' round
cheeks and hips, Szpindel's high forehead and lumpy, lanky
chassis—even the enhanced carboplatinum brick shit-house that
Bates used for a body— all had shriveled to the same desiccated
collection of sticks and bones. Even our hair seemed to have become
strangely discolored during the voyage, although I knew that was
impossible. More likely it was just filtering the pallor of the skin
beneath. Still. The pre-dead James had been dirty blond, Szpindel's
hair had been almost dark enough to call <I>black</I>— but the
stuff floating from their scalps looked the same dull kelpy brown to
me now. Bates kept her head shaved, but even her eyebrows weren't as
rusty as I remembered them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We'd revert to our old selves soon enough. Just add water. For now,
though, the old slur was freshly relevant: the Undead really did all
look the same, if you didn't know how to look.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If you did, of course—if you forgot appearance and watched for
motion, ignored meat and studied <I>topology</I>—you'd never
mistake one for another. Every facial tic was a data point, every
conversational pause spoke volumes more than the words to either
side. I could see James' personae shatter and coalesce in the
flutter of an eyelash. Szpindel's unspoken distrust of Amanda Bates
shouted from the corner of his smile. Every twitch of the phenotype
cried aloud to anyone who knew the language.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Where's—&quot; James croaked, coughed, waved one spindly
arm at Sarasti's empty coffin gaping at the end of the row.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's lips cracked in a small rictus. &quot;Gone back to Fab,
eh? Getting the ship to build some dirt to lie on.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably communing with the Captain.&quot; Bates breathed
louder than she spoke, a dry rustle from pipes still getting
reacquainted with the idea of respiration.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James again: &quot;Could do that up here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Could take a dump up here, too,&quot; Szpindel rasped. &quot;Some
things you do by yourself, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And some things you kept <I>to</I> yourself. Not many baselines
felt comfortable locking stares with a vampire—Sarasti, ever
courteous, tended to avoid eye contact for exactly that reason—but
there were other surfaces to his topology, just as mammalian and just
as readable. If he had withdrawn from public view, maybe I was the
reason. Maybe he was keeping secrets.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
After all, <I>Theseus</I> damn well was.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She'd taken us a good fifteen AUs towards our destination before
something scared her off course. Then she'd skidded north like a
startled cat and started climbing: a wild high three-gee burn off
the ecliptic, thirteen hundred tonnes of momentum bucking against
Newton's First. She'd emptied her Penn tanks, bled dry her substrate
mass, squandered a hundred forty days' of fuel in hours. Then a long
cold coast through the abyss, years of stingy accounting, the thrust
of every antiproton weighed against the drag of sieving it from the
void. Teleportation isn't magic: the Icarus stream couldn't send us
the actual antimatter it made, only the quantum specs. <I>Theseus</I>
had to filterfeed the raw material from space, one ion at a time.
For long dark years she'd made do on pure inertia, hoarding every
swallowed atom. Then a flip; ionizing lasers strafing the space
ahead; a ramscoop thrown wide in a hard brake. The weight of a
trillion trillion protons slowed<I> </I>her down and refilled her gut
and flattened us all over again. <I>Theseus</I> had burned
relentless until almost the moment of our resurrection.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was easy enough to retrace those steps; our course was there in
ConSensus for anyone to see. Exactly why the ship had blazed that
trail was another matter. Doubtless it would all come out during the
post-rez briefing. We were hardly the first vessel to travel under
the cloak of <I>sealed orders</I>, and if there'd been a pressing
need to know by now we'd have known by now. Still, I wondered who
had locked out the Comm logs. Mission Control, maybe. Or Sarasti.
Or <I>Theseus</I> herself, for that matter. It was easy to forget
the Quantical AI at the heart of our ship. It stayed so discreetly
in the background, nurtured and carried us and permeated our
existence like an unobtrusive God; but like God, it never took your
calls.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti was the official intermediary. When the ship did speak, it
spoke to him— and Sarasti called it <I>Captain</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So did we all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd given us four hours to come back. It took more than three just
to get me out of the crypt. By then my brain was at least firing on
most of its synapses, although my body—still sucking fluids
like a thirsty sponge— continued to ache with every movement.
I swapped out drained electrolyte bags for fresh ones and headed aft.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fifteen minutes to spin-up. Fifty to the post-resurrection briefing.
Just enough time for those who preferred gravity-bound sleep to haul
their personal effects into the drum and stake out their allotted 4.4
square meters of floor space.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Gravity—or any centripetal facsimile thereof—did not
appeal to me. I set up my own tent in zero-gee and as far to stern
as possible, nuzzling the forward wall of the starboard shuttle tube.
The tent inflated like an abscess on <I>Theseus'</I> spine, a little
climate-controlled bubble of atmosphere in the dark cavernous vacuum
beneath the ship's carapace. My own effects were minimal; it took
all of thirty seconds to stick them to the wall, and another thirty
to program the tent's environment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Afterwards I went for a hike. After five years, I needed the
exercise.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Stern was closest, so I started there: at the shielding that
separated payload from propulsion. A single sealed hatch blistered
the aft bulkhead dead center. Behind it, a service tunnel wormed
back through machinery best left untouched by human hands. The fat
superconducting torus of the ramscoop ring; the antennae fan behind
it, unwound now into an indestructible soap-bubble big enough to
shroud a city, its face turned sunward to catch the faint quantum
sparkle of the Icarus antimatter stream. More shielding behind that;
then the telematter reactor, where raw hydrogen and refined
information conjured fire three hundred times hotter than the sun's.
I knew the incantations, of course—antimatter cracking and
deconstruction, the teleportation of quantum serial numbers—but
it was still magic to me, how we'd come so far so fast. It would
have been magic to anyone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except Sarasti, maybe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Around me, the same magic worked at cooler temperatures and to less
volatile ends: a small riot of chutes and dispensers crowded the
bulkhead on all sides. A few of those openings would choke on my
fist: one or two could swallow me whole. <I>Theseus</I>' fabrication
plant could build everything from cutlery to cockpits. Give it a big
enough matter stockpile and it could have even been built another
<I>Theseus</I>, albeit in many small pieces and over a very long
time. Some wondered if it could build another crew as well, although
we'd all been assured that was impossible. Not even these machines
had fine enough fingers to reconstruct a few trillion synapses in the
space of a human skull. Not yet, anyway.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I believed it. They would never have shipped us out fully-assembled
if there'd been a cheaper alternative.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I faced forward. Putting the back of my head against that sealed
hatch I could see almost to <I>Theseus</I>' bow, an uninterrupted
line-of-sight extending to a tiny dark bull's-eye thirty meters
ahead. It was like staring at a great textured target in shades of
white and gray: concentric circles, hatches centered within
bulkheads one behind another, perfectly aligned. Every one stood
open, in nonchalant defiance of a previous generation's safety codes.
We could keep them closed if we wanted to, if it made us feel safer.
That was all it would do, though; it wouldn't improve our empirical
odds one whit. In the event of trouble those hatches would slam shut
long milliseconds before Human senses could even make sense of an
alarm. They weren't even computer-controlled. <I>Theseus</I>' body
parts had <I>reflexes</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I pushed off against the stern plating—wincing at the tug and
stretch of disused tendons—and coasted forward, leaving Fab
behind. The shuttle-access hatches to <I>Scylla</I> and <I>Charybdis</I>
briefly constricted my passage to either side. Past them the spine
widened into a corrugated extensible cylinder two meters across
and—at the moment—maybe fifteen long. A pair of ladders
ran opposite each other along its length; raised portholes the size
of manhole covers stippled the bulkhead to either side. Most of
those just looked into the hold. A couple served as general-purpose
airlocks, should anyone want to take a stroll beneath the carapace.
One opened into my tent. Another, four meters further forward,
opened into Bates'.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
From a third, just short of the forward bulkhead, Jukka Sarasti
climbed into view like a long white spider.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If he'd been Human I'd have known instantly what I saw there, I'd
have smelled <I>murderer</I> all over his topology. And I wouldn't
have been able to even guess at the number of his victims, because
his affect was so utterly without remorse. The killing of a hundred
would leave no more stain on Sarasti's surfaces than the swatting of
an insect; guilt beaded and rolled off this creature like water on
wax.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Sarasti wasn't human. Sarasti was a whole different animal, and
coming from him all those homicidal refractions meant nothing more
than <I>predator</I>. He had the inclination, was born to it;
whether he had ever acted on it was between him and Mission Control.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Maybe they cut you some slack</I>, I didn't say to him. <I>Maybe
it's just a cost of doing business. You're mission-critical, after
all. For all I know you cut a deal. You're so very smart, you know
we wouldn't have brought you back in the first place if we hadn't
</I>needed<I> you. From the day they cracked the vat you knew you
had leverage.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Is that how it works, Jukka? You save the world, and the folks
who hold your leash agree to look the other way?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
As a child I'd read tales about jungle predators transfixing their
prey with a stare. Only after I'd met Jukka Sarasti did I know how
it felt. But he wasn't looking at me now. He was focused on
installing his own tent, and even if he <I>had</I> looked me in the
eye there'd have been nothing to see but the dark wraparound visor he
wore in deference to Human skittishness. He ignored me as I grabbed
a nearby rung and squeezed past.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could have sworn I smelled raw meat on his breath.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Into the drum (<I>drums</I>, technically; the BioMed hoop at the back
spun on its own bearings). I flew through the center of a cylinder
sixteen meters across. <I>Theseus</I>' spinal nerves ran along its
axis, the exposed plexii and piping bundled against the ladders on
either side. Past them, Szpindel's and James' freshly-erected tents
rose from nooks on opposite sides of the world. Szpindel himself
floated off my shoulder, still naked but for his gloves, and I could
tell from the way his fingers moved that his favorite color was
green. He anchored himself to one of three stairways to nowhere
arrayed around the drum: steep narrow steps rising five vertical
meters from the deck into empty air.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The next hatch gaped dead-center of the drum's forward wall; pipes
and conduits plunged into the bulkhead to each side. I grabbed a
convenient rung to slow myself—biting down once more on the
pain—and floated through.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
T-junction. The spinal corridor continued forward, a smaller
diverticulum branched off to an EVA cubby and the forward airlock. I
stayed the course and found myself back in the crypt, mirror-bright
and less than two meters deep. Empty pods gaped to the left; sealed
ones huddled to the right. We were so irreplaceable we'd come with
replacements. They slept on, oblivious. I'd met three of them back
in training. Hopefully none of us would be getting reacquainted any
time soon.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Only four pods to starboard, though. No backup for Sarasti.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Another hatchway. Smaller this time. I squeezed through into the
bridge. Dim light there, a silent shifting mosaic of icons and
alphanumerics iterating across dark glassy surfaces. Not so much
bridge as cockpit, and a cramped one at that. I'd emerged between
two acceleration couches, each surrounded by a horseshoe array of
controls and readouts. Nobody expected to ever <I>use </I>this
compartment. <I>Theseus</I> was perfectly capable of running
herself, and if she wasn't we were capable of running her from our
inlays, and if we weren't the odds were overwhelming that we were all
dead anyway. Still, against that astronomically off-the-wall chance,
this was where one or two intrepid survivors could pilot the ship
home again after everything else had failed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Between the footwells the engineers had crammed one last hatch and
one last passageway: to the observation blister on <I>Theseus</I>'
prow. I hunched my shoulders (tendons cracked and complained) and
pushed through—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—into darkness. Clamshell shielding covered the outside of the
dome like a pair of eyelids squeezed tight. A single icon glowed
softly from a touchpad to my left; faint stray light followed me
through from the spine, brushed dim fingers across the concave
enclosure. The dome resolved in faint shades of blue and gray as my
eyes adjusted. A stale draft stirred the webbing floating from the
rear bulkhead, mixed oil and machinery at the back of my throat.
Buckles clicked faintly in the breeze like impoverished wind chimes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I reached out and touched the crystal: the innermost layer of two,
warm air piped through the gap between to cut the cold. Not
completely, though. My fingertips chilled instantly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Space out there.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Perhaps, en route to our original destination, <I>Theseus</I> had
seen something that scared her clear out of the solar system. More
likely she hadn't been running away from anything but <I>to</I>
something else, something that hadn't been discovered until we'd
already died and gone from Heaven. In which case...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I reached back and tapped the touchpad. I half-expected nothing to
happen; <I>Theseus'</I> windows could be as easily locked as her comm
logs. But the dome split instantly before me, a crack then a
crescent then a wide-eyed lidless stare as the shielding slid
smoothly back into the hull. My fingers clenched reflexively into a
fistful of webbing. The sudden void stretched empty and unforgiving
in all directions, and there was nothing to cling to but a metal disk
barely four meters across.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me
understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.
Stars, and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—nothing else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>What did you expect? </I>I chided myself. <I>An alien mothership
hanging off the starboard bow?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Well, why not? We were out here for <I>something</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The others were, anyway. They'd be essential no matter where we'd
ended up. But my own situation was a bit different, I realized. <I>My</I>
usefulness degraded with distance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And we were over half a light year from home.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;When
it is dark enough, you can see the stars.&quot; </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Emerson</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Where was I when the lights came down?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was emerging from the gates of Heaven, mourning a father who was—to
his own mind, at least—still alive.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It had been scarcely two months since Helen had disappeared under the
cowl. Two months by our reckoning, at least. From her perspective
it could have been a day or a decade; the Virtually Omnipotent set
their subjective clocks along with everything else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She wasn't coming back. She would only deign to see her husband
under conditions that amounted to a slap in the face. He didn't
complain. He visited as often as she would allow: twice a week,
then once. Then every two. Their marriage decayed with the
exponential determinism of a radioactive isotope and still he sought
her out, and accepted her conditions.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On the day the lights came down, I had joined him at my mother's
side. It was a special occasion, the last time we would ever see her
in the flesh. For two months her body had lain in state along with
five hundred other new ascendants on the ward, open for viewing by
the next of kin. The interface was no more real than it would ever
be, of course; the body could not talk to us. But at least it was
<I>there</I>, its flesh warm, the sheets clean and straight. Helen's
lower face was still visible below the cowl, though eyes and ears
were helmeted. We could touch her. My father often did. Perhaps
some distant part of her still felt it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But eventually someone has to close the casket and dispose of the
remains. Room must be made for the new arrivals—and so we came
to this last day at my mother's side. Jim took her hand one more
time. She would still be available in her world, on her terms, but
later this day the body would be packed into storage facilities
crowded far too efficiently for flesh and blood visitors. We had
been assured that the body would remain intact—the muscles
electrically exercised, the body flexed and fed, the corpus kept
ready to return to active duty should Heaven experience some
inconceivable and catastrophic meltdown. Everything was reversible,
we were told. And yet—there were so many who had ascended, and
not even the deepest catacombs go on forever. There were rumors of
dismemberment, of nonessential body parts hewn away over time
according to some optimum-packing algorithm. Perhaps Helen would be
a torso this time next year, a disembodied head the year after.
Perhaps her chassis would be stripped down to the brain before we'd
even left the building, awaiting only that final technological
breakthrough that would herald the arrival of the Great Digital
Upload.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Rumors, as I say. I personally didn't know of anyone who'd come back
after ascending, but then why would anyone want to? Not even Lucifer
left Heaven until he was pushed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Dad might have known for sure—Dad knew more than most people,
about the things most people weren't supposed to know—but he
never told tales out of turn. Whatever he knew, he'd obviously
decided its disclosure wouldn't have changed Helen's mind. That
would have been enough for him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We donned the hoods that served as day passes for the Unwired, and we
met my mother in the spartan visiting room she imagined for these
visits. She'd built no windows into the world she occupied, no hint
of whatever utopian environment she'd constructed for herself. She
hadn't even opted for one of the prefab visiting environments
designed to minimize dissonance among visitors. We found ourselves
in a featureless beige sphere five meters across. There was nothing
in there but her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Maybe not so far removed from her vision of utopia after all</I>,
I thought.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My father smiled. &quot;Helen.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jim.&quot; She was twenty years younger than the thing on the
bed, and still she made my skin crawl. &quot;Siri! You came!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She always used my name. I don't think she ever called me <I>son</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're still happy here?&quot; my father asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wonderful. I do wish you could join us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jim smiled. &quot;Someone has to keep the lights on.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now you <I>know</I> this isn't goodbye,&quot; she said. &quot;You
can visit whenever you like.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only if you do something about the scenery.&quot; Not just a
joke, but a lie; Jim would have come at her call even if the gauntlet
involved bare feet and broken glass.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And Chelsea, too,&quot; Helen continued. &quot;It would be so
nice to finally meet her after all this time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Chelsea's <I>gone</I>, Helen,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh yes but I know you stay in touch. I know she was special to
you. Just because you're not <I>together</I> any more doesn't mean
she can't—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>You know she</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A startling possibility stopped me in mid-sentence: maybe I hadn't
actually told them.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Son,&quot; Jim said quietly. &quot;Maybe you could give us a
moment.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I would have given them a fucking lifetime. I unplugged myself back
to the ward, looked from the corpse on the bed to my blind and
catatonic father in his couch, murmuring sweet nothings into the
datastream. Let them perform for each other. Let them formalize
and finalize their so-called relationship in whatever way they saw
fit. Maybe, just once, they could even bring themselves to be
honest, there in that other world where everything else was a lie.
Maybe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt no desire to bear witness either way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But of course I had to go back in for my own formalities. I adopted
my role in the familial set-piece one last time, partook of the usual
lies. We all agreed that this wasn't going to change anything, and
nobody deviated enough from the script to call anyone else a liar on
that account. And finally—careful to say <I>until next time</I>
rather than <I>goodbye</I>—we took our leave of my mother.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I even suppressed my gag reflex long enough to give her a hug.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jim had his inhaler in hand as we emerged from the darkness. I
hoped, without much hope, that he'd throw it into the garbage
receptacle as we passed through the lobby. But he raised it to his
mouth and took another hit of vassopressin, that he would never be
tempted.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fidelity in an aerosol. &quot;You don't need that any more,&quot; I
said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably not,&quot; he agreed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It won't work anyway. You can't imprint on someone who isn't
even there, no matter how many hormones you snort. It just—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jim said nothing. We passed beneath the muzzles of sentries panning
for infiltrating Realists.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She's <I>gone</I>,&quot; I blurted. &quot;She doesn't care if
you find someone else. She'd be happy if you did.&quot; <I>It would
let her pretend the books had been balanced.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She's my wife,&quot; he told me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That doesn't mean what it used to. It never did.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He smiled a bit at that. &quot;It's my life, son. I'm comfortable
with it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Dad—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't blame her,&quot; he said. &quot;And neither should
you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Easy for him to say. Easy even to accept the hurt she'd inflicted
on him all these years. This cheerful façade here at the end
hardly made up for the endless bitter complaints my father had
endured throughout living memory. <I>Do you think it's easy when you
disappear for months on end? Do you think it's easy always wondering
who you're with and what you're doing and if you're even alive? Do
you think it's easy raising a child like </I>that<I> on your own?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She'd blamed him for everything, but he bore it gracefully because he
knew it was all a lie. He knew he was only the pretense. She wasn't
leaving because he was AWOL, or unfaithful. Her departure had
nothing to do with him at all. It was me. Helen had left the world
because she couldn't stand to look at the thing who'd replaced her
son.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I would have pursued it—would have tried yet again to make my
father <I>see</I>—but by now we'd left the gates of Heaven for
the streets of Purgatory, where pedestrians on all sides murmured in
astonishment and stared open-mouthed at the sky. I followed their
gaze to a strip of raw twilight between the towers, and gasped—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The stars were falling.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Zodiac had rearranged itself into a precise grid of bright points
with luminous tails. It was as though the whole planet had been
caught in some great closing net, the knots of its mesh aglow with
St. Elmo's fire. It was beautiful. It was terrifying.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked away to recalibrate my distance vision, to give this
ill-behaved hallucination a chance to vanish gracefully before I set
my empirical gaze to high-beam. I saw a vampire in that moment, a
female, walking among us like the archetypal wolf in sheep's
clothing. Vampires were uncommon creatures at street level. I'd
never seen one in the flesh before.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She had just stepped onto the street from the building across the
way. She stood a head taller than the rest of us, her eyes shining
yellow and bright as a cat's in the deepening dark. She realized, as
I watched, that something was amiss. She looked around, glanced at
the sky—and continued on her way, totally indifferent to the
cattle on all sides, to the heavenly portent that had transfixed
them. Totally indifferent to the fact that the world had just turned
inside-out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was 1035 Greenwich Mean Time, February 13, 2082.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They clenched around the world like a fist, each black as the inside
of an event horizon until those last bright moments when they all
burned together. They screamed as they died. Every radio up to
geostat groaned in unison, every infrared telescope went briefly
snowblind. Ashes stained the sky for weeks afterwards; mesospheric
clouds, high above the jet stream, turned to glowing rust with every
sunrise. The objects, apparently, consisted largely of iron. Nobody
ever knew what to make of that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For perhaps the first time in history, the world <I>knew</I> before
being <I>told</I>: if you'd seen the sky, you had the scoop. The
usual arbiters of newsworthiness, stripped of their accustomed role
in filtering reality, had to be content with merely labeling it. It
took them ninety minutes to agree on <I>Fireflies</I>. A half hour
after that, the first Fourier transforms appeared in the noosphere;
to no one's great surprise, the Fireflies had not wasted their dying
breaths on static. There was pattern embedded in that terminal
chorus, some cryptic intelligence that resisted all earthly analysis.
The experts, rigorously empirical, refused to speculate: they only
admitted that the Fireflies had said <I>something</I>. They didn't
know what.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Everyone else did. How else would you explain 65,536 probes evenly
dispersed along a lat-long grid that barely left any square meter of
planetary surface unexposed? Obviously the Flies had taken our
picture. The whole world had been caught with its pants down in
panoramic composite freeze-frame. We'd been <I>surveyed</I>—whether
as a prelude to formal introductions or outright invasion was
anyone's guess.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My father might have known someone who might have known. But by then
he'd long since disappeared, as he always did during times of
hemispheric crisis. Whatever he knew or didn't, he left me to find
my own answers with everyone else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was no shortage of perspectives. The noosphere seethed with
scenarios ranging from utopian to apocalyptic. The Fireflies had
seeded lethal germs through the jet stream. The Fireflies had been
on a nature safari. The Icarus Array was being retooled to power a
doomsday weapon against the aliens. The Icarus Array had already
been destroyed. We had decades to react; anything from another solar
system would have to obey the lightspeed limit like everyone else.
We had days to live; organic warships had just crossed the asteroid
belt and would be fumigating the planet within a week.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Like everyone else, I bore witness to lurid speculations and talking
heads. I visited blathernodes, soaked myself in other people's
opinions. That was nothing new, as far as it went; I'd spent my
whole life as a sort of alien ethologist in my own right, watching
the world behave, gleaning patterns and protocols, learning the rules
that allowed me to infiltrate human society. It had always worked
before. Somehow, though, the presence of <I>real </I>aliens had
changed the dynamics of the equation. Mere observation didn't
satisfy any more. It was as though the presence of this new outgroup
had forced me back into the clade whether I liked it or not; the
distance between myself and the world suddenly seemed forced and
faintly ridiculous.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Yet I couldn't, for my life, figure out how to let it go.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea had always said that telepresence emptied the Humanity from
Human interaction. &quot;They say it's indistinguishable,&quot; she
told me once, &quot;just like having your family right there,
snuggled up so you can see them and feel them and smell them next to
you. But it's not. It's just shadows on the cave wall. I mean,
sure, the shadows come in three-dee color with force-feedback tactile
interactivity. They're good enough to fool the civilized brain. But
your gut knows those aren't <I>people</I>, even if it can't put its
finger on <I>how</I> it knows. They just don't <I>feel</I> real.
Know what I mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't. Back then I'd had no clue what she was talking about. But
now we were all cavemen again, huddling beneath some overhang while
lightning split the heavens and vast formless monsters, barely
glimpsed in bright strobe-frozen instants, roared and clashed in the
darkness on all sides. There was no comfort in solitude. You
couldn't get it from interactive shadows. You needed someone <I>real</I>
at your side, someone to hold on to, someone to share your airspace
along with your fear and hope and uncertainty.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I imagined the presence of companions who wouldn't vanish the moment
I unplugged. But Chelsea was gone, and Pag in her wake. The few
others I could have called— peers and former clients with whom
my impersonations of rapport had been especially convincing—didn't
seem worth the effort. Flesh and blood had its own relationship to
reality: necessary, but not sufficient.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Watching the world from a distance, it occurred to me at last: I
knew exactly what Chelsea had meant, with her Luddite ramblings about
desaturated Humanity and the colorless interactions of virtual space.
I'd known all along.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd just never been able to see how it was any different from real
life.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you are a machine.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Yes, I know. But imagine you're a different <I>kind</I> of machine,
one built from metal and plastic and designed not by blind, haphazard
natural selection but by engineers and astrophysicists with their
eyes fixed firmly on specific goals. Imagine that your purpose is
not to replicate, or even to survive, but to gather information.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I can imagine that easily. It is in fact a much simpler
impersonation than the kind I'm usually called on to perform.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I coast through the abyss on the colder side of Neptune's orbit.
Most of the time I exist only as an absence, to any observer on the
visible spectrum: a moving, asymmetrical silhouette blocking the
stars. But occasionally, during my slow endless spin, I glint with
dim hints of reflected starlight. If you catch me in those moments
you might infer something of my true nature: a segmented creature
with foil skin, bristling with joints and dishes and spindly
antennae. Here and there a whisper of accumulated frost clings to a
joint or seam, some frozen wisp of gas encountered in Jupiter space
perhaps. Elsewhere I carry the microscopic corpses of Earthly
bacteria who thrived with carefree abandon on the skins of space
stations or the benign lunar surface—but who had gone to
crystal at only half my present distance from the sun. Now, a breath
away from Absolute Zero, they might shatter at a photon's touch.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My heart is warm, at least. A tiny nuclear fire burns in my thorax,
leaves me indifferent to the cold outside. It won't go out for a
thousand years, barring some catastrophic accident; for a thousand
years, I will listen for faint voices from Mission Control and do
everything they tell me to. So far they have told me to study
comets. Every instruction I have ever received has been a precise
and unambiguous elaboration on that one overriding reason for my
existence.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Which is why these latest instructions are so puzzling, for they make
no sense at all. The frequency is wrong. The signal strength is
wrong. I cannot even understand the handshaking protocols. I
request clarification.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The response arrives almost a thousand minutes later, and it is an
unprecedented mix of orders and requests for information. I answer
as best I can: yes, this is the bearing at which signal strength was
greatest. No, it is not the usual bearing for Mission Control. Yes,
I can retransmit: here it is, all over again. Yes, I will go into
standby mode.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I await further instructions. They arrive 839 minutes later, and
they tell me to stop studying comets immediately.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I am to commence a controlled precessive tumble that sweeps my
antennae through consecutive 5<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>-arc
increments along all three axes, with a period of 94 seconds. Upon
encountering any transmission resembling the one which confused me, I
am to fix upon the bearing of maximal signal strength and derive a
series of parameter values. I am also instructed to retransmit the
signal to Mission Control.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I do as I'm told. For a long time I hear nothing, but I am
infinitely patient and incapable of boredom. Eventually a fleeting,
familiar signal brushes against my afferent array. I reacquire and
track it to source, which I am well-equipped to describe: a
trans-Neptunian comet in the Kuiper Belt, approximately two hundred
kilometers in diameter. It is sweeping a 21-cm tightbeam radio wave
across the heavens with a periodicity of 4.57 seconds. This beam
does not intersect Mission Control's coordinates at any point. It
appears to be directed at a different target entirely.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It takes much longer than usual for Mission Control to respond to
this information. When it does, it tells me to change course.
Mission Control informs me that henceforth my new destination is to
be referred to as <I>Burns-Caulfield</I>. Given current fuel and
inertial constraints I will not reach it in less than thirty-nine
years.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I am to watch nothing else in the meantime.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd been liaising for a team at the Kurzweil Institute, a fractured
group of cutting-edge savants convinced they were on the verge of
solving the quantum-glial paradox. That particular log-jam had
stalled AI for decades; once broken, the experts promised we'd be
eighteen months away from the first personality upload and only two
years from reliable Human-consciousness emulation in a software
environment. It would spell the end of corporeal history, usher in a
Singularity that had been waiting impatiently in the wings for nigh
on fifty years.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Two months after Firefall, the Institute cancelled my contract.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was actually surprised it had taken them so long. It had cost us
so much, this overnight inversion of global priorities, these
breakneck measures making up for lost initiative. Not even our shiny
new post-scarcity economy could withstand such a seismic shift
without lurching towards bankruptcy. Installations in deep space,
long since imagined secure by virtue of their remoteness, were
suddenly vulnerable for exactly the same reason. Lagrange habitats
had to be refitted for defense against an unknown enemy. Commercial
ships on the Martian Loop were conscripted, weaponised, and
reassigned; some secured the high ground over Mars while others fell
sunward to guard the Icarus Array.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It didn't matter that the Fireflies hadn't fired a shot at any of
these targets. We simply couldn't afford the risk.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were all in it together, of course, desperate to regain some
hypothetical upper hand by any means necessary. Kings and
corporations scribbled IOUs on the backs of napkins and promised to
sort everything out once the heat was off. In the meantime, the
prospect of Utopia in two years took a back seat to the shadow of
Armageddon reaching back from next Tuesday. The Kurzweil Institute,
like everyone else, suddenly had other things to worry about.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I returned to my apartment, split a bulb of Glenfiddich, and
arrayed virtual windows like daisy petals in my head. Everyone Icons
debated on all sides, serving up leftovers two weeks past their
expiry date:
</P>
<TABLE ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=532 BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0>
<COL WIDTH=128>
<COL WIDTH=196>
<COL WIDTH=209>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Disgraceful breakdown of global security.</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No harm done.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Comsats annihilated. Thousands dead.</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Random</I> collisions. <I>Accidental </I>deaths.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(who sent them?)</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We should have seen them coming. Why didn't we—</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Deep space. Inverse square. Do the math.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>They were </I>stealthed<I>!</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(what do they <I>want</I>?)</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We were raped!</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jesus Christ. They just took our <I>picture</I>.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Why the silence?</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Moon's fine. Mars's fine.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(Where are they?)</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Why haven't they made contact?</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nothing's touched the O'Neills.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Technology Implies Belligerence!</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(Are they coming back?)</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nothing attacked us.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Yet</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nothing <I>invaded</I>.</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>So far.</I></P>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH=128>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=196>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(But where <I>are</I> they?)</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-top: 0.08in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(Are they coming <I>back</I>?)</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="margin-top: 0.08in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
(Anyone?)</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
<TD WIDTH=209>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" ALIGN=LEFT STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jim Moore Voice Only</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
encrypted</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Accept?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The text window blossomed directly in my line of sight, eclipsing the
debate. I read it twice. I tried to remember the last time he'd
called from the field, and couldn't.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I muted the other windows. &quot;Dad?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Son,&quot; he replied after a moment. &quot;Are you well?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like everyone else. Still wondering whether we should be
celebrating or crapping our pants.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He didn't answer immediately. &quot;It's a big question, all right,&quot;
he said at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't suppose you could give me any advice? They're not
telling us anything at ground level.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was a rhetorical request. His silence was hardly necessary to
make the point. &quot;I know,&quot; I added after a moment. &quot;Sorry.
It's just, they're saying the Icarus Array went down, and—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You know I can't—oh.&quot; My father paused. &quot;That's
ridiculous. Icarus's fine.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It is?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He seemed to be weighing his words. &quot;The Fireflies probably
didn't even notice it. There's no particle trail as long as it stays
offstream, and it would be buried in solar glare unless someone knew
where to search.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was my turn to fall silent. This conversation felt suddenly
<I>wrong</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because when my father went on the job, he went dark. He <I>never</I>
called his family.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because even when my father came <I>off</I> the job, he never talked
about it. It wouldn't matter whether the Icarus Array was still
online or whether it had been shredded and thrown into the sun like a
thousand kilometers of torn origami; he wouldn't tell either tale
unless an official announcement had been made. Which—I
refreshed an index window just to be sure— it hadn't.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because while my father was a man of few words, he was <I>not </I>a
man of frequent, indecisive pauses—and he had hesitated before
each and every line he'd spoken in this exchange.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tugged ever-so-gently on the line—&quot;But they've sent
ships.&quot;—and started counting.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>One one-thousand, two one-thousand—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just a precaution. Icarus was overdue for a visit anyway. You
don't swap out your whole grid without at least dropping in and
kicking the new tires first.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nearly three seconds to respond.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're on the moon,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pause. &quot;Close enough.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What are you—Dad, why are you telling me this? Isn't
this a security breach?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're going to get a call,&quot; he told me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;From who? Why?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're assembling a team. The kind of—people you deal
with.&quot; My father was too rational to dispute the contributions
of the recons and hybrids in our midst, but he'd never been able to
hide his mistrust of them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They need a synthesist,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Isn't it lucky you've got one in the family.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Radio bounced back and forth. &quot;This isn't nepotism, Siri. I
wanted very much for them to pick someone else.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks for the vote of conf—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But he'd seen it coming, and preempted me before my words could cross
the distance: &quot;It's not a slap at your abilities and you know
it. You're simply the most qualified, and the work is vital.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So why—&quot; I began, and stopped. He wouldn't want to
keep me away from some theoretical gig in a WestHem lab.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's this about, Dad?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The Fireflies. They found something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>What</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A radio signal. From the Kuiper. We traced the bearing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're <I>talking</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not to us.&quot; He cleared his throat. &quot;It was
something of a fluke that we even intercepted the transmission.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Who are they talking to?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We don't know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Friendly? Hostile?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Son, we don't <I>know</I>. The encryption seems similar, but
we can't even be sure of that. All we have is the location.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you're sending a team.&quot; <I>You're sending </I>me.
We'd never gone to the Kuiper before. It had been decades since we'd
even sent robots. Not that we lacked the capacity. We just hadn't
bothered; everything we needed was so much closer to home. The
Interplanetary Age had stagnated at the asteroids.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But now something lurked at the furthest edge of our backyard,
calling into the void. Maybe it was talking to some other solar
system. Maybe it was talking to something closer, something <I>en
route</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not the kind of situation we can safely ignore,&quot; my
father said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What about probes?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of course. But we can't wait for them to report back. The
follow-up's been fast-tracked; updates can be sent en route.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He gave me a few extra seconds to digest that. When I still didn't
speak, he said, &quot;You have to understand. Our only edge is that
as far as we know, Burns-Caulfield doesn't know we're on to it. We
have to get as much as we can in whatever window of opportunity that
grants us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But <I>Burns-Caulfield</I> had hidden itself. <I>Burns-Caulfield
</I>might not welcome a forced introduction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What if I refuse?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The timelag seemed to say <I>Mars</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know you, son. You won't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But if I <I>did</I>. If I'm the best qualified, if the job's
so vital…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He didn't have to answer. I didn't have to ask. At these kind of
stakes, mission-critical elements didn't get the luxury of choice. I
wouldn't even have the childish satisfaction of holding my breath and
refusing to play—the will to resist is no less mechanical than
the urge to breathe. Both can be subverted with the right
neurochemical keys.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You killed my Kurzweill contract,&quot; I realized.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's the least of what we did.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We let the vacuum between us speak for a while.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If I could go back and undo the—the thing that made you
what you are,&quot; Dad said after a while, &quot;I would. In a
second.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I have to go. I just wanted to give you the heads-up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. Thanks.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I love you, son.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Where are you? Are you coming back?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks,&quot; I said again. &quot;That's good to know.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This is what my father could not unmake. This is what I am:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I
stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I <I>am</I> the curtain.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I am not an entirely new breed. My roots reach back to the dawn of
civilization but those precursors served a different function, a less
honorable one. They only greased the wheels of social stability;
they would sugarcoat unpleasant truths, or inflate imaginary bogeymen
for political expedience. They were vital enough in their way. Not
even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force on all
of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler;
the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear
of threatening alternatives. There have always been those tasked
with the rotation of informational topologies, but throughout most of
history they had little to do with increasing its <I>clarity</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The new Millennium changed all that. We've surpassed ourselves now,
we're exploring terrain beyond the limits of merely human
understanding. Sometimes its contours, even in conventional space,
are just too intricate for our brains to track; other times its very
axes extend into dimensions inconceivable to minds built to fuck and
fight on some prehistoric grassland. So many things constrain us,
from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable
philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of
self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations <I>predict</I> the
behavior of the quantum world, but none can <I>explain</I> it. After
four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond
the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects
greater than our own.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But we're not very good at building them. The forced matings of
minds and electrons succeed and fail with equal spectacle. Our
hybrids become as brilliant as savants, and as autistic. We graft
people to prosthetics, make their overloaded motor strips juggle meat
and machinery, and shake our heads when their fingers twitch and
their tongues stutter. Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow
so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the
hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the
barely-intelligent creatures left behind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for,
you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their
answers. You have to take their word on faith—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—Or you use information theory to <I>flatten</I> it for you, to
squash the tesseract into two dimensions and the Klein bottle into
three, to simplify reality and pray to whatever Gods survived the
millennium that your honorable twisting of the truth hasn't ruptured
any of its load-bearing pylons. You hire people like me; the
crossbred progeny of profilers and proof assistants and information
theorists.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In formal settings you'd call me Synthesist. On the street you call
me <I>jargonaut</I> or <I>poppy</I>. If you're one of those savants
whose hard-won truths are being bastardized and lobotomized for
powerful know-nothings interested only in market share, you might
call me a <I>mole</I> or a <I>chaperone</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If you're Isaac Szpindel you'd call me <I>commissar</I>, and while
the jibe would be a friendly one, it would also be more than that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I've never convinced myself that we made the right choice. I can
cite the usual justifications in my sleep, talk endlessly about the
rotational topology of information and the irrelevance of semantic
comprehension. But after all the words, I'm still not sure. I don't
know if anyone else is, either. Maybe it's just some grand
consensual con, marks and players all in league. We won't admit that
our creations are beyond us; they may speak in tongues, but our
priests can read those signs. Gods leave their algorithms carved
into the mountainside but it's just li'l ol' me bringing the tablets
down to the masses, and I don't threaten anyone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe the Singularity happened years ago. We just don't want to
admit we were left behind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;All
kinds of animals living here. Occasional demons too.&quot; </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Ian
Anderson, <I>Catfish Rising</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Third Wave, they called us. All in the same boat, driving into
the long dark courtesy of a bleeding-edge prototype crash-graduated
from the simulators a full eighteen months ahead of schedule. In a
less fearful economy, such violence to the timetable would have
bankrupted four countries and fifteen multicorps.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The first two waves came out of the gate in even more of a hurry. I
didn't find out what had happened to them until thirty minutes before
the briefing, when Sarasti released the telemetry into ConSensus.
Then I opened wide; experience flooded up my inlays and spilled
across my parietal cortex in glorious high-density fast forward.
Even now I can bring those data back, fresh as the day they were
recorded. I'm <I>there</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'm <I>them</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I am unmanned. I am disposable. I am souped-up and
stripped-down, a telematter drive with a couple of cameras bolted to
the front end, pushing gees that would turn meat to jelly. I sprint
joyously toward the darkness, my twin brother a stereoscopic hundred
klicks to starboard, dual streams of backspat pions boosting us to
relativity before poor old </I>Theseus<I> had even crawled past Mars.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>But now, six billion kilometers to stern, Mission Control turns
off the tap and leaves us coasting. The comet swells in our sights,
a frozen enigma sweeping its signal across the sky like a lighthouse
beam. We bring rudimentary senses to bear and stare it down on a
thousand wavelengths. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We've lived for this moment.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We see an erratic wobble that speaks of recent collisions. We see
scars—smooth icy expanses where once-acned skin has liquefied
and refrozen, far too recently for the insignificant sun at our backs
to be any kind of suspect.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We see an astronomical impossibility: a comet with a heart of
refined iron.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Burns-Caufield sings as we glide past. Not to us; it ignores our
passage as it ignored our approach. It sings to someone else
entirely. Perhaps we'll meet that audience some day. Perhaps
they're waiting in the desolate wastelands ahead of us. Mission
Control flips us onto our backs, keeps us fixed on target past any
realistic hope of acquisition. They send last-ditch instructions,
squeeze our fading signals for every last bit among the static. I
can sense their frustration, their reluctance to let us go; once or
twice, we're even asked if some judicious mix of thrust and gravity
might let us linger here a bit longer. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>But deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the </I>stars<I>.
</I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Bye, Burnsie. Bye, Mission Control. Bye, Sol. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>See you at heat death.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Warily, we close on target.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>There are three of us in the second wave—slower than our
predecessors, yes, but still so much faster than anything
flesh-constrained. We are weighed down by payloads which make us
virtually omniscient. We see on every wavelength, from radio to
string. Our autonomous microprobes measure everything our masters
anticipated; tiny onboard assembly lines can build tools from the
atoms up, to assess the things they did not. Atoms, scavenged from
where we are, join with ions beamed from where we were: thrust and
materiel accumulate in our bellies.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>This extra mass has slowed us, but midpoint braking maneuvers have
slowed us even more. The last half of this journey has been a
constant fight against momentum from the first. It is not an
efficient way to travel. In less-hurried times we would have built
early to some optimal speed, perhaps slung around a convenient planet
for a little extra </I>oomph<I>, coasted most of the way. But time
is pressing, so we burn at both ends. We must </I>reach<I> our
destination; we cannot afford to pass it by, cannot afford the
kamikaze exuberance of the first wave. They merely glimpsed the lay
of the land. We must map it down to the motes.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We must be more </I>responsible<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Now, slowing towards orbit, we see everything they saw and more.
We see the scabs, and the impossible iron core. We hear the singing.
And there, just beneath the comet's frozen surface, we see
</I>structure<I>: an infiltration of architecture into geology. We
are not yet close enough to squint, and radar is too long in the
tooth for fine detail. But we are smart, and there are three of us,
widely separated in space. The wavelengths of three radar sources
can be calibrated to interfere at some predetermined point of
convergence—and those tripartite echoes, hologramatically
remixed, will increase resolution by a factor of twenty-seven.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Burns-Caulfield stops singing the moment we put our plan into
action. In the next instant I go blind.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>It's a temporary aberration, a reflexive amping of filters to
compensate for the overload. My arrays are back online in seconds,
diagnostics green within and without. I reach out to the others,
confirm identical experiences, identical recoveries. We are all
still fully functional, unless the sudden increase in ambient ion
density is some kind of sensory artefact. We are ready to continue
our investigation of Burns-Caulfield.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>The only real problem is that Burns-Caulfield seems to have
disappeared...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus </I>carried no regular crew—no navigators or
engineers, no one to swab the decks, no meat wasted on tasks that
machinery orders of mag smaller could perform orders of mag better.
Let superfluous deckhands weigh down other ships, if the nonAscendent
hordes needed to attach some pretense of usefulness to their lives.
Let them infest vessels driven only by commercial priorities. The
only reason <I>we</I> were here was because nobody had yet optimized
software for First Contact. Bound past the edge of the solar
system, already freighted with the fate of the world, <I>Theseus</I>
wasted no mass on self-esteem.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So here we were, rehydrated and squeaky-clean: Isaac Szpindel, to
study the aliens. The Gang of Four—Susan James and her
secondary personae— to talk to them. Major Amanda Bates was
here to fight, if necessary. And Jukka Sarasti to command us all, to
move us like chess pieces on some multidimensional game board that
only vampires could see.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd arrayed us around a conference table that warped gently through
the Commons, keeping a discreet and constant distance from the
curved deck beneath. The whole drum was furnished in Early Concave,
tricked unwary and hung-over brains into thinking they were looking
at the world through fisheye lenses. In deference to the creakiness
of the<I> nouveaux undead</I> it spun at a mere fifth of a gee, but
it was just warming up. We'd be at half-grav in six hours, stuck
there for eighteen out of every twenty-four until the ship decided we
were fully recovered. For the next few days, free-fall would be a
rare and blesséd thing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Light sculptures appeared on the tabletop. Sarasti could have fed
the information directly to our inlays— the whole briefing
could have gone through ConSensus, without the need to assemble
physically in the same place— but if you want to be sure
everyone's paying attention, you bring them together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel leaned in conspiratorially at my side. &quot;Or maybe the
bloodsucker just gets off seeing all this meat in close quarters,
eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If Sarasti heard he didn't show it, not even to me. He pointed to a
dark heart at the center of the display, his eyes lost behind black
glass. &quot;Oasa object. Infrared emitter, methane class.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On the display it was—nothing. Our apparent destination was a
black disk, a round absence of stars. In real life it weighed in at
over ten Jupiters and measured twenty percent wider at the belly. It
was directly in our path: too small to burn, too remote for the
reflection of distant sunlight, too heavy for a gas giant, too light
for a brown dwarf.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;When did <I>that</I> show up?&quot; Bates squeezed her rubber
ball in one hand, the knuckles whitening.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;X-ray spike appears during the '76 microwave survey.&quot; Six
years before Firefall. &quot;Never confirmed, never reacquired.
Like a torsion flare from an L-class dwarf, but we should see
anything big enough to generate that kind of effect and the sky's
dark on that bearing. IAU calls it a statistical artefact.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's eyebrows drew together like courting caterpillers. &quot;What
changed?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti smiled faintly, keeping his mouth closed. &quot;The metabase
gets—<I>crowded</I>, after Firefall. Everyone <I>skittish</I>,
looking for clues. After Burns-Caulfield explodes—&quot; He
clicked at the back of his throat. &quot;Turns out the spike might
arise from a subdwarf object after all, if the magnetosphere's
torqued enough.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates: &quot;Torqued by what?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't know.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Layers of statistical inference piled up on the table while Sarasti
sketched background: even with a solid bearing and half the world's
attention, the object had hidden from all but the most intensive
search. A thousand telescopic snapshots had been stacked one on
another and squeezed through a dozen filters before something emerged
from the static, just below the three-meter band and the threshold of
certainty. For the longest time it hadn't even been real: just a
probabilistic ghost until <I>Theseus</I> got close enough to collapse
the waveform. A quantum particle, heavy as ten Jupiters.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Earthbound cartographers were calling it <I>Big Ben</I>. <I>Theseus</I>
had barely passed Saturn's orbit when it showed up in the residuals.
That discovery would have been moot for anyone else; no other ship
caught en route could have packed enough fuel for anything but the
long dejected loop back home. But <I>Theseus</I>' thin, infinitely
attenuate fuel line reached all the way back to the sun; she could
turn on the proverbial dime. We'd changed course in our sleep and
the Icarus stream tracked our moves like a cat after prey, feeding us
at lightspeed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And here we were.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Talk about long shots,&quot; Szpindel grumbled.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Across the table, Bates flicked her wrist. Her ball sailed over my
head; I heard it bounce off the deck (<I>not the deck</I>, something
in me amended: <I>handrail</I>). &quot;We're assuming the comet was
a deliberate decoy, then.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti nodded. The ball riccocheted back into my line of sight high
overhead and disappeared briefly behind the spinal bundle, looping
through some eccentric, counterintuitive parabola in the drum's
feeble grav.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So they want to be left alone.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti steepled his fingers and turned his face in her direction.
&quot;That your recommendation?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She wished it was. &quot;No, sir. I'm just saying that
Burns-Caulfield took a lot of resources and effort to set up.
Whoever built it obviously values their anonymity and has the
technology to protect it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The ball bounced one last time and wobbled back towards the Commons.
Bates half-hopped from her seat (she floated briefly), barely
catching it on its way past. There remained a new-born-animal
awkwardness to her movements, half Coriolis, half residual rigor.
Still: a big improvement in four hours. The rest of the Humans were
barely past the walking stage.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe it wasn't much trouble for <I>them</I> at all, eh?&quot;
Szpindel was musing. &quot;Maybe it was dead easy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;In which case they might or might not be as xenophobic, but
they're even more advanced. We don't want to rush into this.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti turned back to the simmering graphics. &quot;So?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates kneaded the recovered ball with her fingertips. &quot;The
second mouse gets the cheese. We may have blown our top-of-the-line
recon in the Kuiper, but we don't have to go in blind. Send in our
own drones along separate vectors. Hold off on a close approach
until we at least know whether we're dealing with friendlies or
hostiles.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James shook her head. &quot;If they were hostile, they could have
packed the Fireflies with antimatter. Or sent one big object instead
of sixty thousand little ones, let the impact take us out.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The Fireflies only imply an initial curiosity,&quot; Bates
said. &quot;Who knows if they liked what they saw?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What if this whole <I>diversion</I> theory's just so much
shit?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned, briefly startled. James's mouth had made the words; <I>Sascha</I>
had spoken them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You wanna stay hidden, you don't light up the sky with fucking
<I>fireworks</I>,&quot; she continued. &quot;You don't need a
diversion if nobody's looking for you, and nobody's looking for you
if you lie low. If they were so <I>curious</I>, they could've just
snuck in a spycam.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Risks detection,&quot; the vampire said mildly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hate to break it, Jukka, but the <I>Fireflies</I> didn't
exactly slip under the rad—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti opened his mouth, closed it again. Filed teeth, briefly
visible, clicked audibly behind his face. Tabletop graphics
reflected off his visor, a band of writhing polychrome distortions
where eyes should be.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha shut up.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti continued. &quot;They trade stealth for speed. By the time
you react, they already have what they want.&quot; He spoke quietly,
patiently, a well-fed predator explaining the rules of the game to
prey that really should know better: <I>the longer it takes me to
track you down, the more hope you have of escaping</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Sascha had already fled. Her surfaces had scattered like a flock
of panicked starlings, and the next time Susan James' mouth opened,
it was Susan James who spoke through it. &quot;Sascha's aware of the
current paradigm, Jukka. She's simply worried that it might be
wrong.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Got another we could trade it on?&quot; Szpindel wondered.
&quot;More options? Longer warranty?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know.&quot; James sighed. &quot;I guess not. It's
just—<I>odd</I>, that they'd want to actively mislead us. I'd
hoped they were merely— well.&quot; She spread her hands.
&quot;Probably no big deal. I'm sure they'll still be willing to
talk, if we handle the introductions right. We just need to be a
little more cautious, perhaps...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti unfolded himself from his chair and loomed over us. &quot;We
go in. What we know weighs against further delay.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates frowned and pitched her ball back into orbit. &quot;Sir, all
we actually <I>know</I> is that an Oasa emitter's in our path. We
don't even know if there's anyone <I>there</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There is,&quot; Sarasti said. &quot;They expect us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Someone's joints cracked in the
silence.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Er...&quot; Szpindel began.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Without looking, Sarasti flicked out his arm and snatched Bates'
returning ball from the air. &quot;Ladar pings <I>Theseus</I> four
hours forty-eight minutes ago. We respond with an identical signal.
Nothing. Probe launches half-hour before we wake up. We don't go in
blind, but we don't wait. They <I>see</I> us already. Longer we
wait, greater risk of countermeasures.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at the dark featureless placeholder on the table: bigger
than Jupiter and we couldn't even see it yet. Something in the
shadow of that mass had just reached out with casual, unimaginable
precision and tapped us on the nose with a laser beam.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This was not going to be an even match.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel spoke for all of us: &quot;You knew that all along? You're
telling us <I>now</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This time Sarasti's smile was wide and toothy. It was as though a
gash had opened in the lower half of his face.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe it was a predator thing. He just couldn't help playing with
his food.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't so much the way they looked. The elongate limbs, the pale
skin, the canines and the extended mandible—noticeable, yes,
even alien, but not disturbing, not <I>frightening</I>. Not even the
eyes, really. The eyes of dogs and cats shine in the darkness; we
don't shiver at the sight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not the way they looked. The way they <I>moved</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something in the reflexes, maybe. The way they held their limbs:
like mantis limbs, long jointed things you just <I>knew </I>could
reach out and snatch you from right across the room, any time they
felt like it. When Sarasti looked at me—really <I>looked</I>,
naked-eyed, unfiltered by the visor— a half-million years just
melted away. The fact that he was extinct meant nothing. The fact
that we'd come so far, grown strong enough to resurrect our own
nightmares to serve us...meant nothing. The genes aren't fooled.
They know what to fear.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of course, you had to experience it in person. Robert Paglini knew
the theory of vampires down the molecules, but even with all those
technical specs in his head he never really <I>got</I> it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He called me, before we left. I hadn't been expecting it; ever since
the roster had been announced our watches had blocked calls from
anyone not explicitly contact-listed. I'd forgotten that Pag had
been. We hadn't spoken since Chelsea. I'd given up on ever hearing
from him again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But there he was. &quot;Pod-man.&quot; He smiled, a tentative
overture.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's good to see you,&quot; I said, because that's what people
said in similar situations.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, well I saw your name in the noose. You've made it big,
for a baseline.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not so big.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Crap. You're the vanguard of the Human Race. You're our
first, last, and only hope against the unknown. Man, you <I>showed</I>
them.&quot; He held his fist up and shook it, vicariously
triumphant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Showing them</I> had become a cornerstone of Robert Paglino's
life. He'd really made it work for him, too, overcome the handicap
of a natural birth with retrofits and enhancements and sheer
bloody-mindedness. In a world in which Humanity had become redundant
in unprecedented numbers, we'd both retained the status of another
age: <I>working professional</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you're taking orders from a vamp,&quot; he said now. &quot;Talk
about fighting fire with fire.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I guess it's practice. Until we run up against the real
thing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He laughed. I couldn't imagine why. But I smiled back anyway.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It <I>was</I> good to see him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So, what are they like?&quot; Pag asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Vampires? I don't know. Just met my first one yesterday.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hard to read. Didn't even seem to be aware of his surroundings
sometimes, he seemed to be... off in his own little world.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He's aware all right. Those things are so fast it's scary.
You know they can hold both aspects of a Necker cube in their heads
at the same time?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The term rang a bell. I subtitled, and saw the thumbnail of a
familiar wireframe box:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
<IMG SRC="Blindsight_html_5c3275b3.png" NAME="Graphic1" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=122 HEIGHT=122 BORDER=0></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now I remembered: classic ambiguous illusion. Sometimes the shaded
panel seemed to be in front, sometimes behind. The perspective
flipped back and forth as you watched.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You or I, we can only see it one way or the other,&quot; Pag
was saying. &quot;Vamps see it both ways <I>at once</I>. Do you
have any <I>idea</I> what kind of an edge that gives 'em?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not enough of one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Touché</I>. But hey, not their fault neutral traits
get fixed in small populations.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know if I'd call the Crucifix glitch <I>neutral</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was at first. How many intersecting right angles do you see
in nature?&quot; He waved one dismissive hand. &quot;Anyway, that's
not the point. The point is they can do something that's
neurologically impossible for us Humans. They can hold <I>simultaneous
multiple worldviews</I>, Pod-man. They just <I>see</I> things we
have to work out step-by-step, they don't have to <I>think</I> about
it. You know, there isn't a single baseline human who could just
tell you, just off the top of their heads, every prime number between
one and a billion? In the old days, only a few autistics could do
shit like that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He never uses the past tense,&quot; I murmered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Huh? Oh, that.&quot; Pag nodded. &quot;They never <I>experience</I>
the past tense. It's just another thread to them. They don't
remember stuff, they <I>relive</I> it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, like a post-traumatic flashback?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not so traumatic.&quot; He grimaced. &quot;Not for <I>them</I>,
at least.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So this is obviously your current hot spot? Vampires?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Pod, vampires are the capital-Hot spot for <I>anyone</I> with a
'neuro' in their c.v. I'm just doing a couple of histology papers.
Pattern-matching receptors, Mexican-hat arrays, reward/irrelevance
filters. The eyes, basically.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Right.&quot; I hesitated. &quot;Those kind of throw you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No <I>shit</I>.&quot; Pag nodded knowingly. &quot;That tap
lucidum of theirs, that <I>shine</I>. Scary.&quot; He shook his
head, impressed all over again at the recollection.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You've never met one,&quot; I surmised.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, in the flesh? I'd give my left ball. Why?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not the shine. It's the—&quot; I groped for a word
that fit— &quot;The <I>attitude</I>, maybe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah,&quot; he said after a bit. &quot;I guess sometimes
you've just gotta be there, huh? Which is why I envy you, Pod-man.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You shouldn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I should. Even if you never meet whoever sent the 'Flies,
you're in for one Christly research opportunity with that—Sarasti,
is it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wasted on me. The only neuro in <I>my</I> file's under medical
history.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He laughed. &quot;Anyway, like I said, I just saw your name in the
headlines and I figured, hey, the man's leaving in a couple of
months, I should probably stop waiting around for <I>him</I> to
call.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It had been over two years. &quot;I didn't think I'd get through. I
thought you'd shitlisted me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nah. Never.&quot; He looked down, though, and fell silent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But you should have called her,&quot; he said at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She was <I>dying</I>. You should've—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There wasn't time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He let the lie sit there for a while.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway,&quot; he said at last. &quot;I just wanted to wish you
luck.&quot; Which wasn't exactly true either.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks. I appreciate that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Kick their alien asses. If aliens have asses.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There's five of us, Pag. Nine if you count the backups. We're
not exactly an army.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just an expression, fellow mammal. Bury the hatchet. Damn the
torpedoes. Soothe the serpent.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Raise the white flag</I>, I thought.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I guess you're busy,&quot; he said, &quot;I'll—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Look, you want to get together? In airspace? I haven't been
to QuBit's in a while.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Love to, Pod. Unfortunately I'm in Mankoya. Splice'n'dice
workshop.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, you mean <I>physically</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Cutting-edge research. Old-school habits.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Too bad.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway, I'll let you go. Just wanted, you know—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks,&quot; I said again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So, you know. Bye,&quot; Robert Paglino told me. Which was,
when you got down to it, the reason he'd called.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He wasn't expecting another chance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag blamed me for the way it had ended with Chelsea. Fair enough. I
blamed him for the way it began.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd gone into neuroeconomics at least partly because his childhood
buddy had turned into a pod person before his eyes. I'd ended up in
Synthesis for roughly the same reason. Our paths had diverged, and
we didn't see each other in the flesh all that often; but two decades
after I'd brutalized a handful of children on his behalf, Robert
Paglino was still my best and only friend.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You need to seriously thaw out,&quot; he told me, &quot;And I
know just the lady to handle the oven mitts.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That is perhaps the worst use of metaphor in the history of
human language,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Seriously, Pod. She'll be good for you. A, a
<I>counterbalance</I>—ease you a bit closer to the comfy mean,
you know?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, Pag, I don't. What is she, another neuroeconomist?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Neuroaestheticist,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There's still a market for those?&quot; I couldn't imagine
how; why pay to tweak your compatibility with some significant other,
when significant others themselves were so out of fashion?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not much of one,&quot; Pag admitted. &quot;Fact is, she's
pretty much retired. But she's still got the tools, my man. Very
thigmotactic. Likes all her relationships face-to-face and in the
flesh.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I dunno, Pag. Sounds like work.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not like <I>your</I> work. She's got to be easier than the
bleeding composites you front for. She's smart, she's sexy, and
she's nicely inside the standard deev except for the personal contact
thing. Which is not so much outright perversion as charming fetish.
In your case it could even be therapeutic.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If I wanted therapy I'd see a therapist.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She does a bit of that too, actually.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah?&quot; And then, despite myself, &quot;Any good?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked me up and down. &quot;No one's <I>that</I> good. That's
not what this is. I just figured you two would click. Chelse is one
of the few who might not be completely put off by your intimacy
issues.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Everyone</I>'s got intimacy issues these days, in case you
hadn't noticed.&quot; He must have; the population had been dropping
for decades.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I was being euphemistic. I meant your aversion to general
Human contact.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Making it euphemistic to call you Human?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He grinned. &quot;Different deal. We got history.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No thanks.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Too late. She's already en route to the appointed place.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Appoin—you're an asshole, Pag.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The tightest.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Which was how I found myself intrusively face-to-face in an airspace
lounge south of Beth and Bear. The lighting was low and indirect,
creeping from under seats and the edges of tables; the chromatics,
this afternoon at least, were defiantly longwave. It was a place
where baselines could pretend to see in infrared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I pretended for a moment, assessing the woman in the corner booth:
gangly and glorious, half-a-dozen ethnicities coexisting peacefully
with no single voice dominant. Something glowed on her cheek, a
faint emerald staccato against the ambient red shift. Her hair
floated in a diffuse ebony cloud about her head; as I neared I
caught occasional glints of metal within that nimbus, the threads of
a static generator purveying the illusion of weightlessness. In
normal light her blood-red skin would doubtless shift down to the
fashionable butterscotch of the unrepentant mongrel.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She <I>was</I> attractive, but so was everyone in this kind of light;
the longer the wavelength, the softer the focus. There's a reason
fuckcubbies don't come with fluorescent lights.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>You will not fall for this</I>, I told myself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Chelsea,&quot; she said. Her little finger rested on one of
the table's inset trickle-chargers. &quot;Former neuroaestheticist,
presently a parasite on the Body Economic thanks to genes and
machines on the cutting edge.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The glow on her cheek flapped bright lazy wings: a tattoo, a
bioluminescent butterfly.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri,&quot; I said. &quot;Freelance synthesist, indentured
servant to the genes and machines that turned you into a parasite.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She waved at the empty seat. I took it, assessing the system before
me, sizing up the best approach for a fast yet diplomatic disconnect.
The set of her shoulders told me she enjoyed lightscapes, and was
embarrassed to admit it. Monahan was her favorite artist. She
thought herself a natural girl because she'd stayed on chemical
libidinals all these years, even though a synaptic edit would have
been simpler. She revelled in her own inconsistency: a woman whose
professional machinery edited thought itself, yet mistrustful of the
dehumanising impact of telephones. Innately affectionate, and
innately afraid of unreturned affection, and indomitably unwilling to
let any of that stop her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She liked what she saw when looked at me. She was a little afraid of
that, too.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea gestured at my side of the table. The touchpads there glowed
soft, dissonant sapphire in the bloody light, like a set of splayed
fingerprints. &quot;Good dope here. Extra hydroxyl on the ring, or
something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Assembly-line neuropharm doesn't do much for me; it's optimized for
people with more meat in their heads. I fingered one of the pads for
appearances, and barely felt the tingle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So. A Synthesist. Explaining the Incomprehensible to the
Indifferent.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I smiled on cue. &quot;More like bridging the gap between the people
who make the breakthroughs and the people who take the credit for
them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She smiled back. &quot;So how do you do it? All those optimized
frontal lobes and refits—I mean, if they're incomprehensible,
how do you comprehend them?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It helps to find pretty much everyone else incomprehensible
too. Provides experience.&quot; There. That should force a bit of
distance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It didn't. She thought I was joking. I could see her lining up to
push for more details, to ask questions about what I did, which would
lead to questions about <I>me</I>, which would lead—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tell me what it's like,&quot; I said smoothly, &quot;rewiring
people's heads for a living.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea grimaced; the butterfly on her cheek fluttered nervously at
the motion, wings brightening. &quot;God, you make it sound like we
turn them into zombies or something. They're just tweaks, mainly.
Changing taste in music or cuisine, you know, optimizing mate
compatibility. It's all completely reversible.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There aren't drugs for that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nah. Too much developmental variation between brains; our
targeting is <I>really</I> fine-scale. But it's not all microsurgery
and fried synapses, you know. You'd be surprised how much rewiring
can be done noninvasively. You can start all sorts of cascades just
by playing certain sounds in the right order, or showing images with
the right balance of geometry and emotion.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I assume those are new techniques.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not really. Rhythm and music hang their hats on the same basic
principle. We just turned art into science.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, but when?&quot; The recent past, certainly. Sometime
within the past twenty years or so—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her voice grew suddenly quiet. &quot;Robert told me about your
operation. Some kind of viral epilepsy, right? Back when you were
just a tyke.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd never explicitly asked him to keep it a secret. What was the
difference anyway? I'd made a full recovery.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Besides, Pag still thought that had happened to someone <I>else</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know your specifics,&quot; Chelsea continued gently.
&quot;But from the sound of it, noninvasive techniques wouldn't have
helped. I'm sure they only did what they had to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to suppress the thought, and couldn't: <I>I like this woman.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt something then, a strange, unfamiliar sensation that somehow
loosened my vertebrae. The chair felt subtly, indefinably more
comfortable at my back.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway.&quot; My silence had thrown her off-stride. &quot;Haven't
done it much since the bottom dropped out of the market. But it <I>did</I>
leave me with a fondness for face-to-face encounters, if you know
what I mean.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. Pag said you took your sex in the first-person.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She nodded. &quot;I'm very old-school. You okay with that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I wasn't certain. I was a virgin in the real world, one of the few
things I still had in common with the rest of civilized society. &quot;In
principle, I guess. It just seems—a lot of effort for not as
much payoff, you know?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't I.&quot; She smiled. &quot;Real fuckbuddies aren't
airbrushed. Got all these <I>needs</I> and <I>demands</I> that you
can't edit out. How can you blame anyone for saying <I>no thanks</I>
to all that, now there's a choice? You gotta wonder how our parents
ever stayed together sometimes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>You gotta wonder </I>why<I> they did</I>. I felt myself sinking
deeper into the chair, wondered again at this strange new sensation.
Chelsea had said the dopamine was tweaked. That was probably it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She leaned forward, not coy, not coquettish, not breaking eye contact
for an instant in the longwave gloom. I could smell the lemony tang
of pheromones and synthetics mingling on her skin. &quot;But there
are advantages too, once you learn the moves,&quot; she said. &quot;The
body's got a long memory. And you <I>do</I> realize that there's no
trickler under your left finger there, don't you, Siri?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked. My left arm was slightly extended, index finger touching
one of the trickle pads; and my right had mirrored the motion while I
wasn't watching, its own finger tapping uselessly on blank tabletop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I pulled it back. &quot;Bit of a bilateral twitch,&quot; I admitted.
&quot;The body creeps into symmetrical poses when I'm not looking.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I waited for a joke, or at least a raised eyebrow. Chelsea just
nodded and resumed her thread. &quot;So if you're game for this, so
am I. I've never been entangled with a synthesist before.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jargonaut's fine. I'm not proud.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't you just always know just exactly what to say.&quot; She
cocked her head at me. &quot;So, your name. What's it mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Relaxed. That was it. I felt <I>relaxed</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know. It's just a name.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, it's not good enough. If we're gonna to be swapping spit
for any length of time you've gotta get a name that <I>means</I>
something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And we were, I realized. Chelsea had decided while I wasn't looking.
I could have stopped her right there, told her what a bad idea this
was, apologized for any misunderstanding. But then there'd be
wounded looks and hurt feelings and guilt because after all, if I
wasn't interested why the hell had I even shown up?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She seemed nice. I didn't want to hurt her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Just for a while</I>, I told myself. <I>It'll be an experience</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think I'll call you Cygnus,&quot; Chelsea said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The swan?&quot; I said. A bit precious, but it could have been
worse.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;Black hole. Cygnus X-1.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I furrowed my brow at her, but I knew exactly what she meant: a
dark, dense object that sucks up the light and destroys everything in
its path.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks a whole fucking lot. Why?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm not sure. Something dark about you.&quot; She shrugged,
and gave me a great toothy grin. &quot;But it's not unattractive.
And let me give you a tweak or two, I bet you'd grow right out of
it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag admitted afterward, a bit sheepishly, that maybe I should have
read that as a warning sign. Live and learn.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Leaders
are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">and
no concept of the odds against them.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Robert
Jarvik</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Our scout fell towards orbit, watching Ben. We fell days behind,
watching the scout. And that was <I>all</I> we did: sit in <I>Theseus</I>'
belly while the system streamed telemetry to our inlays. Essential,
irreplaceable, mission-critical—we might as well have been
ballast during that first approach.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We passed Ben's Rayleigh limit. <I>Theseus</I> squinted at a meager
emission spectrum and saw a rogue halo element from Canis Major—a
dismembered remnant of some long-lost galaxy that had drifted into
ours and ended up as road kill, uncounted billions of years ago. We
were closing on something from outside the Milky Way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The probe arced down and in, drew close enough for false-color
enhance. Ben's surface brightened to a seething parfait of
high-contrast bands against a diamond-hard starscape. Something
twinkled there, faint sparkles on endless overcast.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Lightning?&quot; James wondered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shook his head. &quot;Meteorites. Must be a lot of rock in
the neighborhood.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wrong color,&quot; Sarasti said. He was not physically among
us—he was back in his tent, hardlined into the Captain—but
ConSensus put him anywhere on board he wanted to be.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Morphometrics scrolled across my inlays: mass, diameter, mean
density. Ben's day lasted seven hours twelve minutes. Diffuse but
massive accretion belt circling the equator, more torus than ring,
extending almost a half-million kilometers from the cloud-tops: the
pulverized corpses of moons perhaps, ground down to leftovers.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Meteorites.&quot; Szpindel grinned. &quot;Told ya.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He seemed to be right; increasing proximity smeared many of those
pinpoint sparkles into bright ephemeral hyphens, scratching the
atmosphere. Closer to the poles, cloud bands flickered with dim,
intermittent flashes of electricity.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<a name="weakpeak">Weak</a> radio emission peaks at 31 and 400m. Outer atmosphere heavy with
methane and ammonia; lithium, water, carbon monoxide in abundance.
Ammonia hydrogen sulfide, alkali halide mixing locally in those torn
swirling clouds. Neutral alkalis in the upper layers. By now even
<I>Theseus</I> could pick those things out from a distance, but our
scout was close enough to see filigree. It no longer saw a disk. It
gazed down at a dark convex wall in seething layers of red and brown,
saw faint stains of anthracene and pyrene.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One of a myriad meteorite contrails scorched Ben's face directly
ahead; for a moment I thought I could even see the tiny dark speck at
its core, but sudden static scratched the feed. Bates cursed
softly. The image blurred, then steadied as the probe pitched its
voice higher up the spectrum. Unable to make itself heard above the
longwave din, now it spoke down a laser.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And still it stuttered. Keeping it aligned across a million
fluctuating kilometers should have posed no problem
at all; our respective trajectories were known parabolas, our
relative positions infinitely predictable at any time <I>t</I>. But
the meteorite's contrail jumped and skittered on the feed, as if the
beam were being repeatedly, infinitesimally knocked out of alignment.
Incandescent gas blurred its details; I doubted that even a
rock-steady image would have offered any sharp edges for a human eye
to hold on to. Still. There was something <I>wrong</I> about it
somehow, something about the tiny black dot at the core of that
fading brightness. Something that some primitive part of my mind
refused to accept as <I>natural</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The image lurched again, and flashed to black, and didn't return.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probe's fried,&quot; Bates reported. &quot;Spike there at the
end. Like it hit a Parker Spiral, but with a <I>really</I> tight
wind.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't need to call up subtitles. It was obvious in the set of her
face, the sudden creases between her eyebrows: she was talking about
a magnetic field.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's—&quot; she began, and stopped as a number popped up
in ConSensus: <I>11.2 Tesla</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Holy shit</I>,&quot; Szpindel whispered. &quot;Is that
right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked from the back of his throat and the back of the ship.
A moment later he served up an instant replay, those last few
seconds of telemetry zoomed and smoothed and contrast-enhanced from
visible light down to deep infrared. There was that same dark shard
cauled in flame, there was the contrail burning in its wake. Now it
dimmed as the object skipped off the denser atmosphere beneath and
regained altitude. Within moments the heat trace had faded entirely.
The thing that had burned at its center rose back into space, a
fading ember. A great conic scoop at its front end gaped like a
mouth. Stubby fins disfigured an ovoid abdomen.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ben lurched and went out all over again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Meteorites,&quot; Bates said dryly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The thing had left me with no sense of scale. It could have been an
insect or an asteroid. &quot;How big?&quot; I whispered, a
split-second before the answer appeared on my inlays:
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Four hundred meters along the major axis.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ben was safely distant in our sights once more, a dark dim disk
centered in <I>Theseus</I>'s forward viewfinder. But I remembered
the close-up: a twinkling orb of black-hearted fires; a face gashed
and pockmarked, endlessly wounded, endlessly healing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There'd been <I>thousands</I> of the things.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> shivered along her length. It was just a pulse of
decelerating thrust; but for that one moment, I imagined I knew how
she felt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We headed in and hedged our bets.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> weaned herself with a ninety-eight-second burn, edged
us into some vast arc that might, with a little effort, turn into an
orbit—or into a quick discreet flyby if the neighborhood turned
out to be a little too rough. The Icarus stream fell invisibly to
port, its unswerving energy lost to space-time. Our city-sized,
molecule-thick parasol wound down and packed itself away until the
next time the ship got thirsty. Antimatter stockpiles began dropping
immediately; this time we were alive to watch it happen. The dip was
infinitesimal, but there was something disquieting about the sudden
appearance of that minus sign on the display.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We could have retained the apron strings, left a buoy behind in the
telematter stream to bounce energy down the well after us. Susan
James wondered why we hadn't.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Too risky,&quot; Sarasti said, without elaboration.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel leaned in James' direction. &quot;Why give 'em something
<I>else</I> to shoot at, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We sent more probes ahead, though, spat them out hard and fast and
too fuel-constrained for anything but flyby and self-destruct. They
couldn't take their eyes off the machines swinging around Big Ben.
<I>Theseus</I> stared her own unblinking stare, more distant though
more acute. But if those high divers even knew we were out there,
they ignored us completely. We tracked them across the closing
distance, watched them swoop and loop though a million parabolas at a
million angles. We never saw them collide—not with each other,
not with the cauldron of rock tumbling around Ben's equator. Every
perigee dipped briefly into atmosphere; there they burned, and
slowed, and accelerated back into space, their anterior scoops
glowing with residual heat.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates grabbed a ConSensus image, drew highlights and a conclusion
around the front end: &quot;Scramjet.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We tracked nearly four hundred thousand in less than two days. That
appeared to be most of them; new sightings leveled off afterwards,
the cumulative curve flattening towards some theoretical asymptote.
Most of the orbits were close and fast, but Sarasti projected a
frequency distribution extending almost back to Pluto. We might stay
out here for years, and still catch the occasional new shovelnose
returning from its extended foray into the void.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The faster ones are pulling over fifty gees on the hairpin
turn,&quot; Szpindel pointed out. &quot;Meat couldn't handle that.
I say they're unmanned.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Meat's reinforceable,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If it's got <I>that</I> much scaffolding you might as well stop
splitting hairs and call it a machine anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Surface morphometrics were absolutely uniform. Four hundred thousand
divers, every one identical. If there was an alpha male calling the
shots among the herd, it couldn't be distinguished on sight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One night—as such things were measured on board— I
followed a soft squeal of tortured electronics up to the observation
blister. Szpindel floated there, watching the skimmers. He'd closed
the clamshells, blocked off the stars and built a little analytical
nest in their place. Graphs and windows spilled across the inside of
the dome as though the virtual space in Szpindel's head was
insufficient to contain them. Tactical graphics lit him from all
sides, turned his body into a bright patchwork of flickering tattoos.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Illustrated Man. &quot;Mind if I come in?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He grunted: <I>Yeah, but not enough to push it</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Inside the dome, the sound of heavy rainfall hissed and spat behind
the screeching that had led me here. &quot;What <I>is</I> that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ben's magnetosphere.&quot; He didn't look back. &quot;Nice,
eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Synthesists don't have opinions on the job; it keeps observer effects
to a minimum. This time I permitted myself a small breach. &quot;The
static's nice. I could do without the screeching.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you kidding? That's the music of the spheres, commissar.
It's <I>beautiful</I>. Like old jazz.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I never got the hang of that either.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He shrugged and squelched the upper register, left the rain pattering
around us. His jiggling eyes fixed on some arcane graphic. &quot;Want
a scoop for your notes?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sure.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There you go.&quot; Light reflected off his feedback glove,
iridescing like the wing of a dragonfly as he pointed: an absorption
spectrum, a looped time-series. Bright peaks surged and subsided,
surged and subsided across a fifteen-second timeframe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Subtitles only gave me wavelengths and Angstroms. &quot;What is it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Diver farts. Those bastards are dumping complex organics into
the atmosphere.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How complex?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hard to tell, so far. Faint traces, and they dissipate like
<I>that</I>. But sugars and aminos at least. Maybe proteins. Maybe
more.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe life? Microbes?&quot; An alien terraforming project...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Depends on how you define <I>life</I>, eh?&quot; Szpindel said.
&quot;Not even <I>Deinococcus</I> would last long down there. But
it's a big atmosphere. They better not be in any hurry if they're
reworking the whole thing by direct inoculation.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If they were, the job would go a lot faster with self-replicating
inoculates. &quot;Sounds like life to me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sounds like agricultural aerosols, is what it sounds like.
Those fuckers are turning the whole damn gas ball into a rice paddy
bigger than Jupiter.&quot; He gave me a scary grin. &quot;Something's
got a <I>beeeg</I> appetite, hmm? You gotta wonder if we aren't
gonna be a teeny bit outnumbered.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's findings were front and center at our next get-together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The vampire summed it up for us, visual aids dancing on the table:
&quot;Von Neumann self-replicating r-selector. Seed washes up and
sprouts skimmers, skimmers harvest raw materials from the accretion
belt. Some perturbations in those orbits; belt's still unsettled.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Haven't seen any of the herd giving birth,&quot; Szpindel
remarked. &quot;Any sign of a factory?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti shook his head. &quot;Discarded, maybe. Decompiled. Or the
herd stops breeding at optimal N.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;These are only the bulldozers,&quot; Bates pointed out.
&quot;There'll be tenants.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A <I>lot</I> of 'em, eh?&quot; Szpindel added. &quot;Outnumber
us by orders of mag.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James: &quot;But they might not show up for centuries.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked. &quot;Do these skimmers build Fireflies?
Burns-Caulfield?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was a rhetorical question. Szpindel answered anyway: &quot;Don't
see how.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Something else does, then. Something already local.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody spoke for a moment. James' topology shifted and shuffled in
the silence; when she opened her mouth again, someone indefinably
<I>younger</I> was on top.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Their habitat isn't anything like ours, if they're building a
home way out here. That's hopeful.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle. The synesthete.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Proteins.&quot; Sarasti's eyes were unreadable behind the
visor. <I>Comparable biochemistries. They might eat us</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Whoever these beings are, they don't even live in <I>sunlight</I>.
No territorial overlap, no resource overlap, no basis for
conflict. There's no reason we shouldn't get along just fine.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;On the other hand,&quot; Szpindel said, &quot;Technology
implies belligerence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle snorted softly. &quot;According to a coterie of theoretical
historians who've never actually met an alien, yes. Maybe now we get
to prove them wrong.&quot; And in the next instant she was just
<I>gone</I>, her affect scattered like leaves in a dust-devil, and
Susan James was back in her place saying:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why don't we just <I>ask</I> them?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ask?&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There are four hundred thousand machines out there. How do we
know they can't talk?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We'd have heard.,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;They're drones.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can't hurt to ping them, just to make sure.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There's no reason they should talk even if they <I>are </I>smart.
Language and intelligence aren't all that strongly correlated even
on Ear—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James rolled her eyes. &quot;Why not <I>try</I>, at least? It's
what we're here for. It's what <I>I'm</I> here for. Just <I>send a
bloody signal</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
After a moment Bates picked up the ball. &quot;Bad game theory,
Suze.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Game theory.&quot; She made it sound like a curse.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tit-for-tat's the best strategy. They pinged us, we pinged
back. Ball's in their court now; we send another signal, we may
give away too much.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know the rules, Amanda. They say if the other party never
takes the initiative again, we ignore each other for the rest of the
mission because game theory says you don't want to look <I>needy</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The rule only applies when you're going up against an unknown
player, &quot; the Major explained. &quot;We'll have more options
the more we learn.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James sighed. &quot;It's just—you all seem to be going into
this <I>assuming</I> they'll be hostile. As if a simple hailing
signal is going to bring them down on us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shrugged. &quot;It only makes sense to be cautious. I may be
a jarhead but I'm not eager to piss off <I>anything</I> that hops
between stars and terraforms superJovians for a living. I don't have
to remind anyone here that <I>Theseus</I> is no warship.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She'd said <I>anyone</I>; she'd meant <I>Sarasti</I>. And Sarasti,
focused on his own horizon, didn't answer. Not out loud, at least;
but his surfaces spoke in a different tongue entirely.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Not yet</I>, they said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates was right, by the way. <I>Theseus</I> was officially tricked
out for exploration, not combat. No doubt our masters would have
preferred to load her up with nukes and particle cannons as well as
her scientific payload, but not even a telemattered fuel stream can
change the laws of inertia. A weaponized prototype would have taken
longer to build; a more massive one, laden with heavy artillery,
would take longer to accelerate. Time, our masters had decided, was
of greater essence than armament. In a pinch our fabrication
facilities could build most anything we needed, given time. It might
take a while to build a particle-beam cannon from scratch, and we
might have to scavenge a local asteroid for the raw material, but we
could do it. Assuming our enemies would be willing to wait, in the
interests of fair play.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But what were the odds that even our best weapons would prove
effective against the intelligence that had pulled off the Firefall?
If the unknown was hostile, we were probably doomed no matter what we
did. The Unknown <I>was</I> technologically advanced—and there
were some who claimed that that made them hostile by definition.
<I>Technology Implies Belligerence</I>, they said.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I suppose I should explain that, now that it's completely irrelevant.
You've probably forgotten after all this time.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints
were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle
intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened
than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would
someday ascend. <I>Surely, </I>said the Optimists, <I> space travel
implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great
destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal
instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the
interstellar gulf.</I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before
graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The
Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and
prokaryotic slime. <I>The odds are just too low</I>, they insisted.
<I>Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too
many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even </I>one<I> Earth
exists; to hope for </I>many<I> is to abandon reason and embrace
religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years
old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here
by now? </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't
have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent,
spacefaring extraterrestrials— <I>but if there </I>are<I> any</I>,
they said, <I>they're not just going to be smart. They're going to
be </I>mean.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human
history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies
grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't
merely <I>Human</I> history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave
to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as
readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue
was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was
what tools are <I>for</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the
universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy,
they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were.
Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never
thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why
invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food
is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force
change upon a world which poses no threat?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into
the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed
stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't
content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd
built cities in space.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled
lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until
my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened
by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It
only suggested that those who <I>had</I> stopped no longer struggled
for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the
best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still
the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with
sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those
environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural
disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or
adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only
environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought
back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced
their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive.
Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an <I>intelligent</I>
one.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never
forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent
opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel
between the stars?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The argument was straightforward enough. It might even have been
enough to carry the Historians to victory—if such debates were
ever settled on the basic of logic, and if a bored population hadn't
already awarded the game to Fermi on points. But the Historian
paradigm was just too ugly, too <I>Darwinian</I>, for most people,
and besides, no one really cared any more. Not even the Cassidy
Survey's late-breaking discoveries changed much. So what if some
dirtball at Ursae Majoris Eridani had an oxygen atmosphere? It was
forty-three lightyears away, and it wasn't talking; and if you wanted
flying chandeliers and alien messiahs, you could build them to order
in Heaven. If you wanted testosterone and target practice you could
choose an afterlife chock-full of nasty alien monsters with really
bad aim. If the mere thought of an alien intelligence threatened
your worldview, you could explore a virtual galaxy of empty real
estate, ripe and waiting for any God-fearing earthly pilgrims who
chanced by.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was all there, just the other side of a fifteen-minute splice job
and a cervical socket. Why endure the cramped and smelly confines of
real-life space travel to go visit pond scum on Europa?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And so, inevitably, a fourth Tribe arose, a Heavenly host that
triumphed over all: the Tribe that Just Didn't Give A Shit. They
didn't know <I>what</I> to do when the Fireflies showed up.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So they sent us, and—in belated honor of the Historian
mantra—they sent along a warrior, just in case. It was
doubtful in the extreme that any child of Earth would be a match for
a race with interstellar technology, should they prove unfriendly.
Still, I could tell that Bates' presence was a comfort, to the Human
members of the crew at least. If you have to go up unarmed against
an angry T-rex with a four-digit IQ, it can't hurt to have a trained
combat specialist at your side.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At the very least, she might be able to fashion a pointy stick from
the branch of some convenient tree.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I swear, if the aliens end up eating the lot of us, we'll have
the Church of Game Theory to thank for it,&quot; Sascha said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She was grabbing a brick of couscous from the galley. I was there
for the caffeine. We were more or less alone; the rest of the crew
was strewn from dome to Fab.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Linguists don't use it?&quot; I knew some that did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>We</I> don't.&quot; <I>And the others are hacks</I>.
&quot;Thing about game theory is, it assumes rational self-interest
among the players. And people just aren't <I>rational.</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It used to assume that,&quot; I allowed. &quot;These days they
factor in the social neurology.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Human</I> social neurology.&quot; She bit a corner off her
brick, spoke around a mouthful of semolina. &quot;That's what game
theory's good for. Rational players, or human ones. And let me take
a wild stab here and wonder if either of those is gonna apply to
<I>that</I>.&quot; She waved her hand at some archetypal alien
lurking past the bulkhead.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's got its limitations,&quot; I admitted. &quot;I guess you
use the tools you can lay your hands on.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha snorted. &quot;So if you couldn't get your hands on a proper
set of blueprints, you'd base your dream home on a book of dirty
limericks.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe not.&quot; And then, a bit defensive in spite of myself,
I added, &quot;I've found it useful, though. In areas you might not
expect it to be.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah? Name one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Birthdays,&quot; I said, and immediately wished I hadn't.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha stopped chewing. Something behind her eyes flickered, almost
<I>strobed</I>, as if her other selves were pricking up their ears.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Go on,&quot; she said, and I could feel the whole Gang
listening in.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's nothing, really. Just an example.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So. Tell us.&quot; Sascha cocked James' head at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged. No point making a big thing out of it. &quot;Well,
according to game theory, you should never tell anyone when your
birthday is.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't follow.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's a lose-lose proposition. There's no winning strategy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you mean, strategy? It's a <I>birthday</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea had said exactly the same thing when I'd tried to explain it
to her. <I>Look</I>, I'd said, <I>say you tell everyone when it is
and nothing happens. It's kind of a slap in the face.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Or suppose they throw you a party</I>, Chelsea had replied.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Then you don't know whether they're doing it sincerely, or if your
earlier interaction just guilted them into observing an occasion
they'd rather have ignored. But if you </I>don't<I> tell anyone, and
nobody commemorates the event, there's no reason to feel badly
because after all, nobody </I>knew<I>. And if someone </I>does<I>
buy you a drink then you know it's sincere because nobody would go to
all the trouble of finding out when your birthday is— and then
celebrating it—if they didn't honestly like you.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of course, the Gang was more up to speed on such things. I didn't
have to explain it verbally: I could just grab a piece of ConSensus
and plot out the payoff matrix, <I>Tell/Don't Tell</I> along the
columns, <I>Celebrated/Not Celebrated</I> along the rows, the
unassailable black-and-white logic of cost and benefit in the squares
themselves. The math was irrefutable: the one winning strategy was
concealment. Only fools revealed their birthdays.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha looked at me. &quot;You ever show this to anyone else?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sure. My girlfriend.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her eyebrows lifted. &quot;<I>You</I> had a girlfriend? A real
one?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded. &quot;Once.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I mean <I>after</I> you showed this to her.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, yes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Uh huh.&quot; Her eyes wandered back to the payoff matrix.
&quot;Just curious, Siri. How did she react?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She didn't, really. Not at first. Then—well, she
laughed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Better woman than me.&quot; Sascha shook her head. &quot;I'd
have dumped you on the spot.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My nightly constitutional up the spine: glorious dreamy flight along
a single degree of freedom. I sailed through hatches and corridors,
threw my arms wide and spun in the gentle cyclonic breezes of the
drum. Bates ran circles around me, bouncing her ball against bins
and bulkheads, stretching to field each curving rebound in the
torqued pseudograv. The toy ricocheted off a stairwell and out of
reach as I passed; the major's curses followed me through the
needle's eye from crypt to bridge.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I braked just short of the dome, stopped by the sound of quiet voices
from ahead.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of <I>course</I> they're beautiful,&quot; Szpindel murmured.
&quot;They're <I>stars</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And I'm guessing I'm not your first choice to share the view,&quot;
James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're a close second. But I've got a date with Meesh.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She never mentioned it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She doesn't tell you everything. Ask her.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey, <I>this</I> body's taking its antilibs. Even if yours
isn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mind out of the gutter, Suze. Eros is only one kind of love,
eh? Ancient Greeks recognized four.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Riiight.&quot; Definitely not Susan, not any more. &quot;Figures
you'd take your lead from a bunch of sodomites.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Fuck</I>, Sascha. All I'm asking is a few minutes alone
with Meesh before the whip starts cracking again...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My body too, Ike. You wanna pull your eyes over <I>my</I>
wool?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I just want to talk, eh? <I>Alone</I>. That too much to ask?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I heard Sascha take a breath.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I heard Michelle let it out.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sorry, kid. You know the Gang.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thank <I>God</I>. It's like some group inspection whenever I
come looking for face time.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I guess you're lucky they like you, then.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I still say you ought to stage a coup.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You could always move in with us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I heard the rustle of bodies in gentle contact. &quot;How are you?&quot;
Szpindel asked. &quot;You okay?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Pretty good. I think I'm finally used to being alive again.
You?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey, I'm a spaz no matter how long I've been dead.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You get the job done.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why, <I>merci</I>. I try.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A small silence. <I>Theseus</I> hummed quietly to herself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mom was right,&quot; Michelle said. &quot;They <I>are</I>
beautiful.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you see, when you look at them?&quot; And then,
catching himself: &quot;I mean—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're—prickly,&quot; Michelle told him. &quot;When I
turn my head it's like bands of very fine needles rolling across my
skin in waves. But it doesn't hurt at all. It just tingles. It's
almost electric. It's nice.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wish I could feel it that way.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You've got the interface. Just patch a camera into your
parietal lobe instead of your visual cortex.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That'd just tell me how a <I>machine</I> feels vision, eh?
Still wouldn't know how <I>you</I> do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Isaac Szpindel. You're a romantic.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nah.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't <I>want</I> to know. You want to keep it
mysterious.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Already got more than enough <I>mystery</I> to deal with out
here, in case you hadn't noticed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, but we can't <I>do</I> anything about that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That'll change. We'll be working our asses off in no time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You think?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Count on it,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;So far we've just been
peeking from a distance, eh? Bet all kinds of interesting stuff
happens when we get in there and start poking with a stick.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe for you. There's got to be a biological <I>somewhere </I>in
the mix, with all those organics.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Damn right. And you'll be talking to 'em while I'm giving them
their physicals.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe not. I mean, Mom would never admit it in a million years
but you had a point about language. When you get right down to it,
it's a workaround. Like trying to describe dreams with smoke
signals. It's noble, it's maybe the most noble thing a body can do
but you can't turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing
something. It's <I>limiting</I>. Maybe whatever's out here doesn't
even use it.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Bet they do, though.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Since when? You're the one who's always pointing out how
<I>inefficient</I> language is.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only when I'm trying to get under your skin. Your pants—whole
other thing.&quot; He laughed at his own joke. &quot;Seriously,
what are they gonna to use instead, telepathy? I say you'll be up to
your elbows in hieroglyphics before you know it. And what's more,
you'll decode 'em in record time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're sweet, but I wonder. Half the time I can't even decode
<I>Jukka</I>.&quot; Michelle fell silent a moment. &quot;He
actually kind of throws me sometimes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You and seven billion others.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. I know it's silly, but when he's not around there's a
part of me that can't stop wondering where he's hiding. And when
he's right there in front of me, I feel like <I>I</I> should be
hiding.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not his fault he creeps us out.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know. But it's hardly a big morale booster. What genius
came up with the idea of putting a vampire in charge?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Where else you going to put them, eh? You want to be the one
giving orders to <I>him</I>?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And it's not just the way he moves. It's the way he <I>talks</I>.
It's just <I>wrong</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You know he—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm not talking about the present-tense thing, or all the
glottals. He—well, you know how he talks. He's <I>terse</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's efficient.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's <I>artificial</I>, Isaac. He's smarter than all of us put
together, but sometimes he talks like he's got a fifty-word
vocabulary.&quot; A soft snort. &quot;It's not like it'd kill him to
use an adverb once in a while.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah. But you say that because you're a linguist, and you can't
see why anyone wouldn't want to wallow in the sheer beauty of
<I>language</I>.&quot; Szpindel <I>harrumphed</I> with mock
pomposity. &quot;Now me, I'm a biologist, so it makes perfect
sense.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Really. Then explain it to me, oh wise and powerful mutilator
of frogs.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Simple. Bloodsucker's a transient, not a resident.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What are—oh, those are killer whales, right? Whistle
dialects.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I said forget the <I>language</I>. Think about the lifestyle.
Residents are fish-eaters, eh? They hang out in big groups, don't
move around much, talk all the time.&quot; I heard a whisper of
motion, imagined Szpindel leaning in and laying a hand on Michelle's
arm. I imagined the sensors in his gloves telling him what she felt
like. &quot;Transients, now—they eat <I>mammals</I>. Seals,
sea lions, <I>smart</I> prey. Smart enough to take cover when they
hear a fluke slap or a click train. So transients are <I>sneaky</I>,
eh? Hunt in small groups, range all over the place, keep their
mouths shut so nobody hears 'em coming.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And Jukka's a transient.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Man's instincts tell him to keep quiet around prey. Every time
he opens his mouth, every time he lets us <I>see</I> him, he's
fighting his own brain stem. Maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on the
ol' guy just because he's not the world's best motivational speaker,
eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He's fighting the urge to eat us every time we have a briefing?
That's reassuring.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel chuckled. &quot;It's probably not that bad. I guess even
killer whales let their guard down after making a kill. Why sneak
around on a full stomach, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So he's <I>not</I> fighting his brain stem. He just isn't
hungry.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably a little of both. Brain stem never really <I>goes
away</I>, you know. But I'll tell you one thing.&quot; Some of the
playfulness ebbed from Szpindel's voice. &quot;I've got no problem
if Sarasti wants to run the occasional briefing from his quarters.
But the moment we stop seeing him altogether? That's when you start
watching your back.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Looking back, I can finally admit it: I envied Szpindel his way with
the ladies. Spliced and diced, a gangly mass of tics and jitters
that could barely feel his own skin, somehow he managed to be—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Charming. That's the word. Charming.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
As a social necessity it was all but obsolete, fading into
irrelevance along with two-party nonvirtual sex pairing. But even
I'd tried one of those; and it would have been nice to have had
Szpindel's self-deprecating skill set to call on.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Especially when everything with Chelsea started falling apart.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I had my own style, of course. I tried to be charming in my own
peculiar way. Once, after one too many fights about <I>honesty </I>and
<I>emotional manipulation</I>, I'd started to think maybe a touch of
whimsy might smooth things over. I had come to suspect that Chelsea
just didn't understand sexual politics. Sure she'd edited brains for
a living, but maybe she'd just memorized all that circuitry without
giving any thought to how it had arisen in the first place, to the
ultimate rules of natural selection that had shaped it. Maybe she
honestly didn't know that we were evolutionary enemies, that <I>all</I>
relationships were doomed to failure. If I could slip that insight
into her head— if I could <I>charm</I> my way past her
defenses— maybe we'd be able to hold things together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I thought about it, and I came up with the perfect way to raise
her awareness. I wrote her a bedtime story, a disarming blend of
humor and affection, and I called it</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
The Book of<B> Oogenesis</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>In the beginning were the gametes. And though there was sex, lo,
there was no gender, and life was in balance.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And God said, &quot;Let there be Sperm&quot;: and some seeds did
shrivel in size and grow cheap to make, and they did flood the
market.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And God said, &quot;Let there be Eggs&quot;: and other seeds were
afflicted by a plague of Sperm. And yea, few of them bore fruit, for
Sperm brought no food for the zygote, and only the largest Eggs could
make up the shortfall. And these grew yet larger in the fullness of
time.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And God put the Eggs into a womb, and said, &quot;Wait here: for
thy bulk has made thee unwieldy, and Sperm must seek thee out in thy
chambers. Henceforth shalt thou be fertilized internally.&quot; And
it was so.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And God said to the gametes, &quot;The fruit of thy fusion may
abide in any place and take any shape. It may breathe air or water
or the sulphurous muck of hydrothermal vents. But do not forget my
one commandment unto you, which has not changed from the beginning of
time: spread thy genes.&quot;</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And thus did Sperm and Egg go into the world. And Sperm said, &quot;I
am cheap and plentiful, and if sowed abundantly I will surely fulfill
God's plan. I shall forever seek out new mates and then abandon them
when they are with child, for there are many wombs and little time.&quot;</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>But Egg said, &quot;Lo, the burden of procreation weighs heavily
upon me. I must carry flesh that is but half mine, gestate and feed
it even when it leaves my chamber&quot; (for by now many of Egg's
bodies were warm of blood, and furry besides). &quot;I can have but
few children, and must devote myself to those, and protect them at
every turn. And I will make Sperm help me, for he got me into this.
And though he doth struggle at my side, I shall not let him stray,
nor lie with my competitors.&quot;</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And Sperm liked this not. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And God smiled, for Its commandment had put Sperm and Egg at war
with each other, even unto the day they made themselves obsolete.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was
perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition—
the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory
bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to
fuck.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
To this day, I still don't know what went wrong.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">&quot;The
glass ceiling is in <I>you</I>. The glass ceiling is <I>conscience</I>.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Jacob
Holtzbrinck, <I>The Keys to the Planet</I> </FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There were stories, before we left Earth, of a fourth wave: a fleet
of deep-space dreadnoughts running silent in our wake, should the
cannon fodder up front run into something nasty. Or, if the aliens
were friendly, an ambassadorial frigate full of politicians and CEOs
ready to elbow their way to the front of the line. Never mind that
Earth had no deep-space dreadnoughts or ambassadorial spaceships;
<I>Theseus</I> hadn't existed either, before Firefall. Nobody had
told us of any such such contingent, but you never show the Big
Picture to your front line. The less they know, the less they can
betray.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I still don't know if the fourth wave ever existed. I never saw any
evidence of one, for whatever that's worth. We might have left them
floundering back at Burns-Caulfield. Or maybe they followed us all
the way to Big Ben, crept just close enough to see what we were up
against, and turned tail before things got ugly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I wonder if that's what happened. I wonder if they made it back
home.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I look back now, and hope not.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A giant marshmallow kicked <I>Theseus</I> in the side. <I>Down</I>
swung like a pendulum. Across the drum Szpindel yelped as if
scalded; in the galley, cracking a bulb of hot coffee, I nearly
<I>was</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>This is it</I>, I thought. <I>We got too close. They're hitting
back.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What the—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A flicker on the party line as Bates linked from the bridge. &quot;Main
drive just kicked in. We're changing course.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To what? Where? Whose orders?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mine,&quot; Sarasti said, appearing above us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody spoke. Drifting into the drum through the stern hatchway:
the sound of something <I>grinding</I>. I pinged <I>Theseus</I>'
resource-allocation stack. Fabrication was retooling itself for the
mass production of doped ceramics.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Radiation shielding. Solid stuff, bulky and primitive, not the
controlled magnetic fields we usually relied on.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang emerged sleepy-eyed from their tent, Sascha grumbling, &quot;What
the <I>fuck</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Watch.&quot; Sarasti took hold of ConSensus and shook it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was a blizzard, not a briefing: gravity wells and orbital
trajectories, shear-stress simulations in thunderheads of ammonium
and hydrogen, stereoscopic planetscapes buried under filters ranging
from gamma to radio. I saw breakpoints and saddlepoints and unstable
equilibria. I saw fold catastrophes plotted in five dimensions. My
augments strained to rotate the information; my meaty half-brain
struggled to understand the bottom line.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something was hiding down there, in plain sight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ben's accretion belt still wasn't behaving. Its delinquency wasn't
obvious; Sarasti hadn't had to plot every pebble and mountain and
planetesimal to find the pattern, but he'd come close. And neither
he nor the conjoined intelligence he shared with the Captain had been
able to explain those trajectories as the mere aftermath of some past
disturbance. The dust wasn't just <I>settling</I>; some of it
marched downhill to the beat of something that even now reached out
from the cloud-tops and pulled debris from orbit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not all that debris seemed to hit. Ben's equatorial regions
flickered constantly with the light of meteorite impacts—much
fainter than the bright wakes of the skimmers, and gone in the wink
of an eye—but those frequency distributions didn't quite
account for all the rocks that had fallen. It was almost as though,
every now and then, some piece of incoming detritus simply vanished
into a parallel universe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Or got caught by something in <I>this</I> one. Something that
circled Ben's equator every forty hours, almost low enough to graze
the atmosphere. Something that didn't show up in visible light, or
infrared, or radar. Something that might have remained pure
hypothesis if a skimmer hadn't burned an incandescent trail across
the atmosphere <I>behind</I> it when <I>Theseus</I> happened to be
watching.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti threw that one dead center: a bright contrail streaking
diagonally across Ben's perpetual nightscape, stuttering partway a
degree or two to the left, stuttering back just before it passed from
sight. Freeze-frame showed a beam of light frozen solid, a segment
snapped from its midsection and jiggled just a hair out of alignment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A segment nine kilometers long.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's <I>cloaked</I>,&quot; Sascha said, impressed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not very well.&quot; Bates emerged from the forward hatch and
sailed spinward. &quot;Pretty obvious refractory artefact.&quot;
She caught stairs halfway to the deck, used the torque of
spin-against-spam to flip upright and plant her feet on the steps.
&quot;Why didn't we catch that before?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No backlight,&quot; Szpindel suggested.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not just the contrail. Look at the clouds.&quot; Sure
enough, Ben's cloudy backdrop showed the same subtle dislocation.
Bates stepped onto the deck and headed for the conference table. &quot;We
should've seen this earlier.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The other probes see no such artefact,&quot; Sarasti said.
&quot;<I>This </I>probe approaches from a wider angle. Twenty-seven
degrees.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wider angle to what?&quot; Sascha said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To the line,&quot; Bates murmured. &quot;Between us and them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was all there on tactical: <I>Theseus</I> fell inwards along an
obvious arc, but the probes we'd dispatched hadn't dicked around with
Hohmann transfers: they'd burned straight down, their courses barely
bending, all within a few degrees of the theoretical line connecting
Ben to <I>Theseus</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except this one. This one had come in wide, and seen the trickery.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The further from our bearing, the more obvious the
discontinuity,&quot; Sarasti intoned. &quot;Think it's clearly
visible on any approach perpendicular to ours.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we're in a blind spot? We see it if we change course?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shook her head. &quot;The blind spot's <I>moving</I>, Sascha.
It's—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Tracking</I> us.&quot; Sascha sucked breath between her
teeth. &quot;<I>Motherfucker</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel twitched. &quot;So what is it? Our skimmer factory?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The freeze-frame's pixels began to <I>crawl</I>. Something emerged,
granular and indistinct, from the turbulent swirls and curlicues of
Ben's atmosphere. There were curves, and spikes, and no smooth
edges; I couldn't tell how much of the shape was real, and how much a
fractal intrusion of underlying cloudscape. But the overall outline
was that of a torus, or perhaps a collection of smaller jagged things
piled together in a rough ring; and it was <I>big</I>. Those nine
klicks of displaced contrail had merely grazed the perimeter, cut
across an arc of forty or fifty degrees. This thing hiding in the
shadow of ten Jupiters was almost thirty kilometers from side to
side.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometime during Sarasti's executive summary we'd stopped
accellerating. <I>Down</I> was back where it belonged. We weren't,
though. Our hesitant maybe-maybe-not approach was a thing of the
past: we vectored straight in now, and damn the torpedoes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Er, that's thirty klicks across,&quot; Sascha pointed out.
&quot;And it's <I>invisible</I>. Shouldn't we maybe be a little <I>more</I>
cautious now?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shrugged. &quot;We could second-guess vampires, we wouldn't
<I>need</I> vampires, eh?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A new facet bloomed on the feed. Frequency histograms and harmonic
spectra erupted from flatline into shifting mountainscapes, a chorus
of visible light.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Modulated laser,&quot; Bates reported.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel looked up. &quot;From <I>that</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates nodded. &quot;Right after we blow its cover. Interesting
timing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Scary</I> timing,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;How'd it
<I>know</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We changed course. We're heading right for it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The lightscape played on, knocking at the window.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Whatever it is,&quot; Bates said, &quot;it's talking to us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well then,&quot; remarked a welcome voice. &quot;By all means
let's say hello.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan James was back in the driver's seat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was the only pure spectator.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They all performed what duties they could. Szpindel ran Sarasti's
sketchy silhouette through a series of filters, perchance to squeeze
a bit of biology from engineering. Bates compared morphometrics
between the cloaked artefact and the skimmers. Sarasti watched us
all from overhead and thought vampire thoughts deeper than anything
we could aspire to. But it was all just make-work. The Gang of Four
was on center stage, under the capable direction of Susan James.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She grabbed the nearest chair, sat, raised her hands as if cueing an
orchestra. Her fingers trembled in mid-air as she played virtual
icons; her lips and jaw twitched with subvocal commands. I tapped
her feed and saw text accreting around the alien signal:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Rorschach to vessel approaching 116<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>Az
-23<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>dec rel. Hello Theseus.
Rorschach to vessel approaching 116<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>Az
-23<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>dec rel. Hello Theseus.
Rorschach to vessel approachi</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She'd decoded the damn thing. Already. She was even answering it:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus to Rorschach. Hello Rorschach.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Hello Theseus. Welcome to the neighborhood.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She'd had less than three minutes. Or rather, <I>they'd</I> had less
than three minutes: four fully-conscious hub personalities and a few
dozen unconscious semiotic modules, all working in parallel, all
exquisitely carved from the same lump of gray matter. I could almost
see why someone would do such deliberate violence to their own minds,
if it resulted in this kind of performance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Up to now I had never fully convinced myself that even survival was
sufficient cause.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Request permission to approach</I>, the Gang sent. Simple and
straightforward: just facts and data, thank you, with as little room
as possible for ambiguity and misunderstanding. Fancy sentiments
like <I>we come in peace</I> could wait. A handshake was not the
time for cultural exchange.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You should stay away. Seriously. This place is dangerous.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That got some attention. Bates and Szpindel hesitated momentarily in
their own headspaces and glanced into James'.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Request information on danger</I>, the gang sent back. Still
keeping it concrete.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Too close and dangerous to you. low orbit complications.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; text-indent: 0.01in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Request information on low orbit complications.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Lethal environment. Rocks and rads. You're welcome. I can take it
but we're like that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.01in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We are aware of the rocks in low orbit. We are equipped to deal
with radiation. Request information on other hazards.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I dug under the transcript to the channel it fed from. <I>Theseus</I>
had turned part of the incoming beam into a sound wave, according to
the color code. Vocal communication, then. They <I>spoke</I>.
Waiting behind that icon were the raw sounds of an alien language.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of course I couldn't resist.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anytime between friends, right? Are you here for the
celebration?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
English. The voice was human, male. <I>Old</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We are here to explore,&quot; replied the Gang, although <I>their</I>
voice was pure <I>Theseus</I>. &quot;Request dialog with agents who
sent objects into near-solar space.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;First contact. Sounds like something to celebrate.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I double-checked the source. No, this wasn't a translation; this was
the actual unprocessed signal coming from—<I>Rorschach</I>, it
had called itself. Part of the signal, anyway; there were other
elements, nonacoustic ones, encoded in the beam.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I browsed them while James said, &quot;Request information about your
celebration&quot;: standard ship-to-ship handshaking protocols.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're interested.&quot; The voice was stronger now, younger.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You are?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes,&quot; the Gang repeated patiently.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You are?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The slightest hesitation. &quot;This is <I>Theseus</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know that, baseline.&quot; In Mandarin, now. &quot;Who
are <I>you</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No obvious change in the harmonics. Somehow, though, the voice
seemed to have acquired an edge.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;This is Susan James. I am a—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You wouldn't be happy here, Susan. Fetishistic religious
beliefs involved. There are dangerous observances.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James chewed her lip.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Request clarification. Are we in danger from these
observances?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You certainly could be.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Request clarification. Is it the observances that are
dangerous, or the low-orbit environment?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The environment <I>of</I> the disturbances. You should pay
attention, Susan. Inattention connotes indifference,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I>
said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Or disrespect,&quot; it added after a moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We had four hours before Ben got in the way. Four hours of
uninterrupted nonstop communication made vastly easier than anyone
had expected. It spoke our language, after all. Repeatedly it
expressed polite concern for our welfare. And yet, for all its
facility with Human speech it told us very little. For four hours it
managed to avoid giving a straight answer on any subject beyond the
extreme inadvisability of closer contact, and by the time it fell
into eclipse we still didn't know why.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti dropped onto the deck halfway through the exchange, his feet
never touching the stairs. He reached out and grabbed a railing to
steady himself on landing, and staggered only briefly. If I'd tried
that I'd have ended up bouncing along the deck like a pebble in a
cement mixer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He stood still as stone for the rest of the session, face motionless,
eyes hidden behind his onyx visor. When <I>Rorschach</I>'s signal
faded in midsentence he assembled us around the Commons table with a
gesture.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It talks,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James nodded. &quot;It doesn't say much, except for asking us to keep
our distance. So far the voice has manifested as adult male,
although the apparent age changed a few times.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd heard all that. &quot;Structure?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The ship-to-ship protocols are perfect. Its vocabulary is far
greater than you could derive from standard nav chatter between a few
ships, so they've been listening to all our insystem traffic—I'd
say for several years at least. On the other hand, the vocabulary
<I>doesn't</I> have anywhere near the range you'd get by monitoring
entertainment multimede, so they probably arrived after the Broadcast
Age.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How well do they use the vocabulary they have?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're using phrase-structure grammar, long-distance
dependencies. FLN recursion, at least four levels deep and I see no
reason why it won't go deeper with continued contact. They're not
parrots, Jukka. They know the rules. That name, for example—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I>,&quot; Bates murmered, knuckles cracking as
she squeezed her pet ball. &quot;Interesting choice.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I checked the registry. There's an I-CAN freighter called
<I>Rorschach</I> on the Martian Loop. Whoever we're talking to must
regard their own platform the way we'd regard a ship, and picked one
of our names to fit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel dropped into the chair beside me, fresh from a galley run.
A bulb of coffee glistened like gelatin in his hand. &quot;<I>That</I>
name, out of all the ships in the innersys? Seems way too symbolic
for a random choice.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think it was random. Unusual ship names provoke
comment; <I>Rorschach</I>'s pilot goes ship-to-ship with some other
vessel, the other vessel comes back with <I>oh Grandma, what an
unusual name you have</I>, <I>Rorschach</I> replies with some
off-the-cuff comment about nomenclatural origins and it all goes out
in the EM. Someone listening to all that chatter not only figures
out the name and the thing it applies to, but can get some sense of
meaning from the context. Our alien friends probably eavesdropped on
half the registry and deduced that <I>Rorschach</I> would be a better
tag for something unfamiliar than, say, the<I> SS Jaymie Matthews</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Territorial <I>and</I> smart.&quot; Szpindel grimaced,
conjuring a mug from beneath his chair. &quot;Wonderful.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shrugged. &quot;Territorial, maybe. Not necessarily
aggressive. In fact, I wonder if they could hurt us even if they
wanted to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;Those skimmers—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The major waved a dismissive hand. &quot;Big ships turn slowly. If
they were setting up to snooker us we'd see it well in advance.&quot;
She looked around the table. &quot;Look, am I the only one who
finds this odd? An interstellar technology that redecorates
superJovians and lines up meteoroids like elephants on parade, and
they were <I>hiding</I>? From <I>us</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Unless there's someone else out here,&quot; James suggested
uneasily.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shook her head. &quot;The cloak was directional. It was aimed
at us and no one else.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And even we saw through it,&quot; Szpindel added.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Exactly. So they go to Plan B, which so far amounts to nothing
but bluster and vague warnings. I'm just saying, they're not <I>acting</I>
like giants. <I>Rorschach</I>'s behavior feels—improvised. I
don't think they expected us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;'Course not. Burns-Caulfield was—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think they expected us <I>yet</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Um,&quot; Szpindel said, digesting it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The major ran one hand over her naked scalp. &quot;Why would they
expect us to just <I>give up</I> after we learned we'd been sniped?
Of course we'd look elsewhere. Burns-Caulfield could only have been
intended as a delaying action; if I was them, I'd plan on us getting
out here eventually. But I think they miscalculated somehow. We got
out here sooner than they expected and caught them with their pants
down.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel split the bulb and emptied it into his mug. &quot;Pretty
large miscalculation for something so smart, eh?&quot; A hologram
bloomed on contact with the steaming liquid, glowing in soft
commemoration of the Gaza Glasslands. The scent of plasticised
coffee flooded the Commons. &quot;Especially after they'd surveilled
us down to the square meter,&quot; he added.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And what did they see? I-CANNs. Solar sails. Ships that take
years to reach the Kuiper, and don't have the reserves to go anywhere
else afterwards. Telematter didn't exist beyond Boeing's simulators
and a half-dozen protypes back then. Easy to miss. They must've
figured one decoy would buy them all the time they needed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To do what?&quot; James wondered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Whatever it is,&quot; Bates said, &quot;We're ringside.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel raised his mug with an infirm hand and sipped. The coffee
trembled in its prison, the surface wobbling and blobbing in the
drum's half-hearted gravity. James pursed her lips in faint
disapproval. Open-topped containers for liquids were technically
<I>verboten</I> in variable-gravity environments, even for people
without Szpindel's dexterity issues.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So they're bluffing,&quot; Szpindel said at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates nodded. &quot;That's my guess. <I>Rorschach</I>'s still under
construction. We could be dealing with an automated system of some
kind.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we can ignore the keep-off-the-grass signs, eh? Walk right
in.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We can afford to bide our time. We can afford to not push it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah. So even though we could maybe handle it now, you want to
wait until it graduates from <I>covert</I> to <I>invulnerable</I>.&quot;
Szpindel shuddered, set down his coffee. &quot;Where'd you get your
military training again? Sporting Chance Academy?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates ignored the jibe. &quot;The fact that <I>Rorschach</I>'s still
growing may be the best reason to leave it alone for a while. We
don't have any idea what the—mature, I guess—what the
mature form of this artefact might be. Sure, it hid. Lots of
animals take cover from predators without <I>being</I> predators,
especially young ones. Sure, it's—evasive. Doesn't give us
the answers we want. But maybe it doesn't <I>know</I> them, did you
consider that? How much luck would you have interrogating a Human
embryo? Adult could be a whole different animal.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Adult could put our asses through a meatgrinder.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So could the <I>embryo</I> for all we know.&quot; Bates rolled
her eyes. &quot;Jesus, Isaac, <I>you're</I> the biologist. I
shouldn't have to tell you how many shy reclusive critters pack a
punch when they're cornered. Porcupine doesn't want any trouble, but
he'll still give you a faceful of quills if you ignore the warning.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel said nothing. He slid his coffee sideways along the concave
tabletop, to the very limit of his reach. The liquid sat there in
its mug, a dark circle perfectly parallel to the rim but canted
slightly towards us. I even thought I could make out the merest
convexity in the surface itself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel smiled faintly at the effect.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James cleared her throat. &quot;Not to downplay your concerns,
Isaac, but we've hardly exhausted the diplomatic route. And at least
it's willing to talk, even if it's not as forthcoming as we'd like.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sure it talks,&quot; Szpindel said, eyes still on the leaning
mug. &quot;Not like us.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, no. There's some—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not just slippery, it's downright <I>dyslexic</I>
sometimes, you noticed? And it mixes up its pronouns.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Given that it picked up the language entirely via passive
eavesdropping, it's remarkably fluent. In fact, from what I can tell
they're more efficient at processing speech than we are.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Gotta be efficient at a language if you're going to be so
<I>evasive</I> in it, eh?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If they were human I might agree with you,&quot; James replied.
&quot;But what appears to us as evasion or deceit could just as
easily be explained by a reliance on smaller conceptual units.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Conceptual units?&quot; Bates, I was beginning to realize,
never pulled up a subtitle if she could help it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James nodded. &quot;Like processing a line of text word by word,
instead of looking at complete phrases. The smaller the units, the
faster they can be reconfigured; it gives you very fast semantic
reflexes. The down side is that it's difficult to maintain the same
level of logical consistency, since the patterns within the larger
structure are more likely to get shuffled.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Whoa</I>.&quot; Szpindel straightened, all thoughts of
liquids and centipetal force forgotten.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;All I'm saying is, we aren't necessarily dealing with
deliberate deception here. An entity who parses information at one
scale might not be aware of inconsistencies on another; it might not
even have conscious access to that level.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's not all you're saying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Isaac, you can't apply Human norms to a—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I <I>wondered</I> what you were up to.&quot; Szpindel dove
into the transcripts. A moment later he dredged up an excerpt:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Request information on environments you consider lethal. Request
information on your response to the prospect of imminent exposure to
lethal environments.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.7in; margin-right: 0.7in; text-indent: 0.01in; margin-bottom: 0.17in; font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Glad to comply. But your lethal is different from us. there are many
migrating circumstances.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You were <I>testing</I> it!&quot; Szpindel crowed. He smacked
his lips; his jaw ticced. You were looking for an emotional
response!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was just a thought. It didn't prove anything.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Was there a difference? In the response time?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James hesitated, then shook her head. &quot;But it was a stupid
idea. There are so many variables, we have no idea how they—I
mean, they're <I>alien</I>...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The pathology's classic.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What pathology?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't mean anything except that they're different from the
Human baseline,&quot; James insisted. &quot;Which is not something
<I>anyone</I> here can look down their nose about.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried again: &quot;What pathology?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James shook her head. Szpindel filled me in: &quot;There's a
syndrome you might have heard about, eh? Fast talkers, no
conscience, tend to malapropism and self-contradiction. No emotional
affect.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're not talking about human beings here,&quot; James said
again, softly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But if we were,&quot; Szpindel added, &quot;we might call
<I>Rorschach</I> a clinical sociopath.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti had said nothing during this entire exchange. Now, with the
word hanging out in the open, I noticed that nobody else would look
at him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We all knew that Jukka Sarasti was a sociopath, of course. Most of
us just didn't mention it in polite company.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel was never that polite. Or maybe it was just that he seemed
to almost <I>understand</I> Sarasti; he could look behind the monster
and regard the <I>organism</I>, no less a product of natural
selection for all the human flesh it had devoured in eons past. That
perspective calmed him, somehow. He could watch Sarasti watching
him, and not flinch.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch,&quot; he said once,
back in training.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Some would have thought that absurd. This man, so massively
interfaced with machinery that his own motor skills had degraded for
want of proper care and feeding; this man who heard x-rays and saw in
shades of ultrasound, so corrupted by retrofits he could no longer
even feel his own fingertips without assistance—this man could
pity <I>anyone</I> else, let alone an infra-eyed predator built to
murder without the slightest twitch of remorse?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Empathy for sociopaths isn't common,&quot; I remarked.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe it should be. We, at least—&quot; he waved an arm;
some remote-linked sensor cluster across the simulator whirred and
torqued reflexively— &quot;<I>chose</I> the add-ons. Vampires
<I>had</I> to be sociopaths. They're too much like their own prey—a
lot of taxonomists don't even consider them a subspecies, you know
that? Never diverged far enough for complete reproductive isolation.
So maybe they're more syndrome than race. Just a bunch of obligate
cannibals with a consistent set of deformities.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And how does that make—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If the only thing you can eat is your own kind, empathy is
gonna be the <I>first</I> thing that goes. Psychopathy's no disorder
in <I>those</I> shoes, eh? Just a survival strategy. But they still
make our skin crawl, so we—chain 'em up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You think we should've repaired the Crucifix glitch?&quot;
Everyone knew why we hadn't. Only a fool would resurrect a monster
without safeguards in place. Vampires came with theirs built in:
without his antiEuclideans Sarasti would go <I>grand mal</I> the
first time he caught close sight of a four-panel window frame.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Szpindel was shaking his head. &quot;We couldn't have fixed it.
Or we <I>could</I> have,&quot; he amended, &quot;but the glitch is in
the visual cortex, eh? Linked to their omnisavantism. You fix it,
you disable their pattern-matching skills, and then what's the point
in even bringing them back?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I didn't know that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, that's the official story.&quot; He fell silent a
moment, cracked a crooked grin. &quot;Then again, we didn't have any
trouble fixing the protocadherin pathways when it suited us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I subtitled. Context-sensitive, ConSensus served up <I>protocadherin
&gamma;-Y</I>: the magical hominid brain protein that vampires had
never been able to synthesize. The reason they hadn't just switched
to zebras or warthogs once denied Human prey, why our discovery of
the terrible secret of the Right Angle had spelled their doom.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway, I just think he's—cut off.&quot; A nervous tic
tugged at the corner of Szpindel's mouth. &quot;Lone wolf, nothing
but sheep for company. Wouldn't you feel lonely?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They don't <I>like</I> company,&quot; I reminded him. You
didn't put vampires of the same sex together, not unless you were
taking bets on a bloodbath. They were solitary hunters and <I>very
</I>territorial. With a minimum viable pred-prey ratio of one to
ten—and human prey spread so sparsely across the Pleistocene
landscape—the biggest threat to their survival had been
competition from their own kind. Natural selection had never taught
them to play nicely together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That didn't cut any ice with Szpindel, though. &quot;Doesn't mean he
can't be lonely,&quot; he insisted.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just means he can't fix it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;They
know the music but not the words.&quot; </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Hare,
<I>Without Conscience</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We did it with mirrors, great round parabolic things, each impossibly
thin and three times as high as a man. <I>Theseus</I> rolled them up
and bolted them to firecrackers stuffed with precious antimatter from
our dwindling stockpiles. With twelve hours to spare she flung them
like confetti along precise ballistic trajectories, and when they
were safely distant she set them alight. They pinwheeled off every
which way, gamma sleeting in their wake until they burned dry. Then
they coasted, unfurling mercurial insect wings across the void.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In the greater distance, four hundred thousand alien machines looped
and burned and took no obvious notice.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I> fell around Ben barely fifteen hundred kilometers
from atmosphere, a fast endless circle that took just under forty
hours to complete. By the time it didn't return to our sight, the
mirrors were all outside the zone of total blindness. A closeup of
Ben's equatorial edge floated in ConSensus. Mirror icons sparkled
around it like an exploding schematic, like the disconnected facets
of some great expanding compound eye. None had brakes. Whatever
high ground the mirrors held, they wouldn't hold it for long.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A mirage wavered stage left, a tiny spot of swirling chaos perhaps
half the size of a fingernail held at arms-length. It told us
nothing, it was pure heat-shimmer—but light bounced towards us
from dozens of distant relayers, and while each saw scarcely more
than our last probe had— a patch of dark clouds set slightly
awry by some invisible prism— each of those views refracted
<I>differently</I>. The Captain sieved flashes from the heavens and
stitched them into a composite view.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Details emerged.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
First a faint sliver of shadow, a tiny dimple all but lost in the
seething equatorial cloud bands. It had just barely rotated into
view around the edge of the disk— a rock in the stream perhaps,
an invisible finger stuck in the clouds, turbulence and shear stress
shredding the boundary layers to either side.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel squinted. &quot;Plage effect.&quot; Subtitles said he was
talking about a kind of sunspot, a knot in Ben's magnetic field.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Higher,&quot; James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something floated above that dimple in the clouds, the way a
ground-effect ocean-liner floats above the depression it pushes into
the water's surface. I zoomed: next to an Oasa subdwarf with ten
times the mass of Jupiter, <I>Rorschach</I> was tiny.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Next to <I>Theseus</I>, it was a colossus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not just a torus but a <I>tangle</I>, a city-sized chaos of spun
glass, loops and bridges and attenuate spires. The surface texture
was pure artifice, of course; ConSensus merely giftwrapped the enigma
in refracted background. Still. In some dark, haunting way, it was
almost beautiful. A nest of obsidian snakes and smoky crystal
spines.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="font-weight: medium; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's talking again,&quot; James reported.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Talk back,&quot; Sarasti said, and abandoned us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So she did: and while the Gang spoke with the artefact, the others
spied upon it. Their vision failed over time—mirrors fell away
along their respective vectors, lines-of-sight degraded with each
passing second—but ConSensus filled with things learned in the
meantime. <I>Rorschach</I> massed 1.8<SUP>.</SUP>10<SUP>10</SUP> kg
within a total volume of 2.3<SUP>.</SUP>10<SUP>8</SUP> cubic meters.
Its magnetic field, judging by radio squeals and its Plage Effect,
was thousands of times stronger than the sun's. Astonishingly, parts
of the composite image were clear enough to discern fine spiral
grooves twined around the structure. (&quot;Fibonacci sequence,&quot;
Szpindel reported, one jiggling eye fixing me for a moment. &quot;At
least they're not <I>completely</I> alien.&quot;) Spheroid
protuberances disfigured the tips of at least three of <I>Rorschach</I>'s
innumerable spines; the grooves were more widely spaced in those
areas, like skin grown tight and swollen with infection. Just before
one vital mirror sailed out of range it glimpsed another spine, split
a third of the way along its length. Torn material floated flaccid
and unmoving in vacuum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Please,&quot; Bates said softly. &quot;Tell me that's not what
it looks like.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel grinned. &quot;Sporangium? Seed pod? Why not?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I> may have been reproducing but beyond a doubt it was
<I>growing</I>, fed by a steady trickle of infalling debris from
Ben's accretion belt. We were close enough now to get a clear view
of that procession: rocks and mountains and pebbles fell like
sediment swirling around a drain. Particles that collided with the
artefact simply <I>stuck</I>; <I>Rorschach</I> engulfed prey like
some vast metastatic amoeba. The acquired mass was apparently
processed internally and shunted to apical growth zones; judging by
infinitesimal changes in the artefact's allometry, it grew from the
tips of its branches.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The procession never stopped. <I>Rorschach</I> was insatiable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was a strange attractor in the interstellar gulf; the paths along
which the rocks fell was precisely and utterly chaotic. It was as
though some Keplerian Black Belt had set up the whole system like an
astronomical wind-up toy, kicked everything into motion, and let
inertia do the rest.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Didn't think that was possible,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shrugged. &quot;Hey, chaotic trajectories are just as
deterministic as any other kind.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That doesn't mean you can even <I>predict</I> them, let along
set them up like that.&quot; Luminous intel reflected off the
major's bald head. &quot;You'd have to know the starting conditions
of a million different variables to ten decimal places. Literally.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yup.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Vampires</I> can't even do that. Quanticle computers can't
do that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shrugged like a marionette.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
All the while the Gang had been slipping in and out of character,
dancing with some unseen partner that—despite their best
efforts— told us little beyond endless permutations of <I>You
really wouldn't like it here</I>. Any interrogative it answered with
another— yet somehow it always left the sense of questions
answered.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.8in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did you send the Fireflies?&quot; Sascha asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We send many things many places,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I>
replied. &quot;What do their specs show?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We do not know their specifications. The Fireflies burned up
over Earth.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then shouldn't you be looking there? When our kids fly,
they're on their own.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha muted the channel. &quot;You know who we're talking to?
Jesus of fucking <I>Nazareth</I>, that's who.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel looked at Bates. Bates shrugged, palms up.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You didn't get it?&quot; Sascha shook her head. &quot;That
last exchange was the informational equivalent of <I>Should we
render taxes unto Caesar</I>. Beat for beat.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks for casting us as the Pharisees,&quot; Szpindel
grumbled.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey, if the Jew fits...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel rolled his eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was when I first noticed it: a tiny imperfection on Sascha's
topology, a flyspeck of doubt marring one of her facets. &quot;We're
not getting anywhere,&quot; she said. &quot;Let's try a side door.&quot;
She winked out: Michelle reopened the outgoing line. &quot;<I>Theseus</I>
to <I>Rorschach</I>. Open to requests for information.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Cultural exchange,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I> said. &quot;That
works for me.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates's brow furrowed. &quot;Is that wise?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If it's not inclined to give information, maybe it would rather
get some. And we could learn a great deal from the kind of questions
it asks.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tell us about home,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I> said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha resurfaced just long enough to say &quot;Relax, Major. Nobody
said we had to give it the right answers.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The stain on the Gang's topology had flickered when Michelle took
over, but it hadn't disappeared. It grew slightly as Michelle
described some hypothetical home town in careful terms that mentioned
no object smaller than a meter across. (ConSensus confirmed my
guess: the hypothetical limit of Firefly eyesight.) When Cruncher
took a rare turn at the helm—
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We don't all of us have parents or cousins. Some never did.
Some come from vats.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I see. That's sad. Vats sounds so dehumanising.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—the stain darkened and spread across his surface like an oil
slick.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Takes too much on faith,&quot; Susan said a few moments later.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time Sascha had cycled back into Michelle it was more than
doubt, stronger than suspicion; it had become an <I>insight</I>, a
dark little meme infecting each of that body's minds in turn. The
Gang was on the trail of something. They still weren't sure what.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tell me more about your cousins,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I> sent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Our cousins lie about the family tree,&quot; Sascha replied,
&quot;with nieces and nephews and Neandertals. We do not like
annoying cousins.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We'd like to know about this tree.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha muted the channel and gave us a look that said <I>Could it </I>be<I>
any more obvious</I>? &quot;It <I>couldn't</I> have parsed that.
There were three linguistic ambiguities in there. It just ignored
them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, it asked for clarification,&quot; Bates pointed out.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It asked a follow-up question. Different thing entirely.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates was still out of the loop. Szpindel was starting to get it,
though.. .</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Subtle motion drew my eye. Sarasti was back, floating above the
bright topography on the table. The light show squirmed across his
visor as he moved his head. I could feel his eyes behind it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And something else, behind <I>him</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't tell what it was. I could point to nothing but a vague
sense of something <I>out of place</I>,<I> </I>somewhere in the
background. Something over on the far side of the drum wasn't quite
right. No, that wasn't it; something <I>nearer</I>, something amiss
somewhere along the drum's axis. But there was nothing there,
nothing I could see—just the naked pipes and conduits of the
spinal bundle, threading through empty space, and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And suddenly, whatever had been wrong was right again. That was what
finally locked my focus: the evaporation of some anomaly, a
reversion to normalcy that caught my eye like a flicker of motion. I
could see the exact spot along the bundle where the change had
occured. There was nothing out of place there now—but there
<I>had</I> been. It was in my head, barely subliminal, an <I>itch</I>
so close to the surface that I knew I could bring it back if I just
<I>concentrated.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha was talking to some alien artefact at the end of a laser beam.
She was going on about familial relationships, both evolutionary and
domestic: Neandertal and Cro Magnon and mother's cousins twice
removed. She'd been doing it for hours now and she had hours yet to
go but right now her chatter was distracting me. I tried to block
her out and concentrate on the half-perceived image teasing my
memory. I'd <I>seen</I> something there, just a moment ago. One of
the conduits had had—yes, too many joints on one of the pipes.
Something that should have been straight and smooth but was somehow
articulated instead. But not <I>one</I> of the pipes, I remembered:
an <I>extra</I> pipe, an extra <I>something</I> anyway, something—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Boney</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was crazy. There was nothing there. We were half a light year
from home talking to unseen aliens about family reunions, and my eyes
were playing tricks on me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Have to talk to Szpindel about that, if it happened again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A lull in the background chatter brought me back. Sascha had stopped
talking. Darkened facets hung around her like a thundercloud. I
pulled back the last thing she had sent: &quot;We usually find our
nephews with telescopes. They are hard as Hobblinites.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
More calculated ambiguity. And <I>Hobblinites</I> wasn't even a
<I>word</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imminent decisions reflected in her eyes. Sascha was poised at the
edge of a precipice, gauging the depth of dark waters below.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You haven't mentioned your father at all,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I>
remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's true, <I>Rorschach,</I>&quot; Sascha admitted softly,
taking a breath—
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And stepping forward.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So why don't you just <I>suck my big fat hairy dick</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The drum fell instantly silent. Bates and Szpindel stared,
open-mouthed. Sascha killed the channel and turned to face us,
grinning so widely I thought the top of her head would fall off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sascha,&quot; Bates breathed. &quot;Are you <I>crazy</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what if I am? Doesn't matter to that thing. It doesn't
have a <I>clue</I> what I'm saying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't even have a clue what it's saying <I>back</I>,&quot;
she added.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wait a minute. You said—<I>Susan</I> said they weren't
parrots. They knew the rules.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And there Susan was, melting to the fore: &quot;I did, and they do.
But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shook her head. &quot;You're saying whatever we're talking
to—it's not even intelligent?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, it could be intelligent, certainly. But we're not <I>talking</I>
to it in any meaningful sense.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what is it? Voicemail?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Actually,&quot; Szpindel said slowly, &quot;I think they call
it a <I>Chinese Room</I>...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>About bloody time</I>, I thought.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I knew all about Chinese Rooms. I was one. I didn't even keep it a
secret, I told anyone who was interested enough to ask.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In hindsight, sometimes that was a mistake.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How can you possibly tell the rest of us what your bleeding
edge is up to if you don't understand it yourself?&quot; Chelsea
demanded back when things were good between us. Before she got to
know me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged. &quot;It's not my <I>job</I> to understand them. If I
could, they wouldn't be very bleeding-edge in the first place. I'm
just a, you know, a conduit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, but how can you translate something if you <I>don't</I>
understand it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A common cry, outside the field. People simply can't accept that
patterns carry their own intelligence, quite apart from the semantic
content that clings to their surfaces; if you manipulate the topology
correctly, that content just—comes along for the ride.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You ever hear of the Chinese Room?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;Only vaguely. Really old, right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hundred years at least. It's a fallacy really, it's an
argument that supposedly puts the lie to Turing tests. You stick
some guy in a closed room. Sheets with strange squiggles come in
through a slot in the wall. He's got access to this huge database of
squiggles just like it, and a bunch of rules to tell him how to put
those squiggles together.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Grammar,&quot; Chelsea said. &quot;Syntax.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded. &quot;The point is, though, he doesn't have any idea what
the squiggles <I>are</I>, or what information they might contain. He
only knows that when he encounters squiggle <I>delta</I>, say, he's
supposed to extract the fifth and sixth squiggles from file <I>theta</I>
and put them together with another squiggle from <I>gamma</I>. So he
builds this response string, puts it on the sheet, slides it back out
the slot and takes a nap until the next iteration. Repeat until the
remains of the horse are well and thoroughly beaten.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So he's carrying on a conversation,&quot; Chelsea said. &quot;In
Chinese, I assume, or they would have called it the Spanish
Inquisition.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Exactly. Point being you can use basic pattern-matching
algorithms to participate in a conversation <I>without having any
idea what you're saying</I>. Depending on how good your rules are,
you can pass a Turing test. You can be a wit and raconteur in a
language you don't even speak.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's synthesis?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only the part that involves downscaling semiotic protocols.
And only in principle. And I'm actually getting my input in
Cantonese and replying in German, because I'm more of a conduit than
a conversant. But you get the idea.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you keep all the rules and protocols straight? There
must be millions of them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's like anything else. Once you learn the rules, you do it
unconsciously. Like riding a bike, or pinging the noosphere. You
don't actively think about the protocols at all, you just—<I>imagine</I>
how your targets behave.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mmm.&quot; A subtle half-smile played at the corner of her
mouth. &quot;But—the argument's not really a fallacy then, is
it? It's spot-on: you really <I>don't</I> understand Cantonese or
German.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The <I>system</I> understands. The whole Room, with all its
parts. The guy who does the scribbling is just one component. You
wouldn't expect a single neuron in your head to understand English,
would you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sometimes one's all I can spare.&quot; Chelsea shook her head.
She wasn't going to let it go. I could see her sorting questions in
order of priority; I could see them getting increasingly—personal…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To get back to the matter at hand,&quot; I said, preempting
them all, &quot;you were going to show me how to do that thing with
the fingers…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A wicked grin wiped the questions right off her face. &quot;Oooh,
that's <I>right</I>…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It's risky, getting involved. Too many confounds. Every tool in the
shed goes dull and rusty the moment you get entangled with the system
you're observing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Still serviceable in a pinch, though.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It hides now,&quot; Sarasti said. &quot;It's vulnerable now.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now we go in.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't news so much as review: we'd been straight-lining towards
Ben for days now. But perhaps the Chinese Room Hypothesis had
strengthened his resolve. At any rate, with <I>Rorschach</I> in
eclipse once more, we prepared to take intrusiveness to the next
level.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> was perpetually gravid; a generic probe incubated in
her fabrication plant, its development arrested just short of birth
in anticipation of unforeseen mission requirements. Sometime between
briefings the Captain had brought it to parturition, customized for
close contact and ground work. It burned down the well at high gee a
good ten hours before <I>Rorschach</I>'s next scheduled appearance,
inserted itself into the rock stream, and went to sleep. If our
calculations were in order, it would not be smashed by some errant
piece of debris before it woke up again. If all went well, an
intelligence that had precisely orchestrated a cast of millions would
not notice one extra dancer on the floor. If we were just plain
lucky, the myriad high-divers that happened to be line-of-sight at
the time were not programmed as tattletales.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Acceptable risks. If we hadn't been up for them, we might as well
have stayed home.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And so we waited: four optimized hybrids somewhere past the
threshold of mere humanity, one extinct predator who'd opted to
command us instead of eating us alive. We waited for <I>Rorschach</I>
to come back around the bend. The probe fell smoothly around the
well, an ambassador to the unwilling—or, if the Gang was right,
maybe just a back-door artist set to B&amp;E an empty condo.
Szpindel had named it <I>Jack-in-the-box</I>, after some antique
child's toy that didn't even rate a listing in ConSensus; we fell in
its wake, nearly ballistic now, momentum and inertia carefully
precalculated to thread us through the chaotic minefield of Ben's
accretion belt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Kepler couldn't do it all, though; <I>Theseus</I> grumbled briefly
now and then, the intermittent firing of her attitude jets rumbling
softly up the spine as the Captain tweaked our descent into the
Maelstrom.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>No plan ever survives contact with the enemy</I> I remembered, but
I didn't know from where.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Got it,&quot; Bates said. A speck appeared at Ben's edge; the
display zoomed instantly to closeup. &quot;Proximity boot.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I> remained invisible to <I>Theseus</I>, close as we
were, close as we were coming. But parallax stripped at least some
of the scales from the probe's eyes; it woke to spikes and spirals of
smoky glass flickering in and out of view, Ben's flat endless horizon
semivisible through the intervening translucence. The view trembled;
waveforms rippled across ConSensus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Quite the magnetic field,&quot; Szpindel remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Braking,&quot; Bates reported. Jack turned smoothly retrograde
and fired its torch. On Tactical, delta-vee swung to red.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha was driving the Gang's body this shift. &quot;Incoming
signal,&quot; she reported. &quot;Same format.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked. &quot;Pipe it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. Hello again, <I>Theseus</I>.&quot;
The voice was female this time, and middle-aged.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha grinned &quot;See? She's not offended at all. Big hairy dick
notwithstanding.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't answer,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Burn complete,&quot; Bates reported.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Coasting now, Jack—<I>sneezed</I>. Silver chaff shot into the
void towards the target: millions of compass needles, brilliantly
reflective, fast enough to make <I>Theseus</I> seem slow. They were
gone in an instant. The probe watched them flee, swept laser eyes
across every degree of arc, scanned its sky twice a second and took
careful note of each and every reflective flash. Only at first did
those needles shoot along anything approaching a straight line: then
they swept abruptly into Lorentz spirals, twisted into sudden arcs
and corkscrews, shot away along new and intricate trajectories
bordering on the relativistic. The contours of <I>Rorschach</I>'s
magnetic field resolved in ConSensus, at first glance like the nested
layers of a glass onion.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Sproinnnng</I>,&quot; Szpindel said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At second glance the onion grew wormy. Invaginations appeared, long
snaking tunnels of energy proliferating fractally at every scale.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. Hello, <I>Theseus</I>.
You there?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A holographic inset beside the main display plotted the points of a
triangle in flux: <I>Theseus</I> at the apex, <I>Rorschach</I> and
Jack defining the narrow base.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. I <I>seeee</I> you....&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She's got a more casual affect than <I>he</I> ever did.&quot;
Sascha glanced up at Sarasti, and did not add <I>You sure about this?</I>
She was starting to wonder herself, though. Starting to dwell on
the potential consequences of being <I>wrong</I>, now that we were
committed. As far as sober second thought was concerned it was too
little too late; but for Sascha, that was progress.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Besides, it had been Sarasti's decision.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Great hoops were resolving in <I>Rorschach</I>'s magnetosphere.
Invisible to human eyes, their outlines were vanishingly faint even
on Tactical; the chaff had scattered so thinly across the sky that
even the Captain was resorting to guesswork. The new macrostructures
hovered in the magnetosphere like the nested gimbals of some great
phantom gyroscope.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I see you haven't changed your vector,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I>
remarked. &quot;We really wouldn't advise continuing your approach.
Seriously. For your own safety.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shook his head. &quot;Hey, Mandy. <I>Rorschach</I> talking
to Jack at all?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If it is, I'm not seeing it. No incident light, no directed EM
of any kind.&quot; She smiled grimly. &quot;Seems to have snuck in
under the radar. And don't call me Mandy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> groaned, twisting. I staggered in the low pseudograv,
reached out to steady myself. &quot;Course correction,&quot; Bates
reported. &quot;Unplotted rock.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. Please respond. Your
current heading is unacceptable, repeat, your current heading is
<I>unacceptable</I>. <I>Strongly</I> advise you change course.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By now the probe coasted just a few kilometers off <I>Rorschach</I>'s
leading edge. That close it served up way more than magnetic fields:
it presented <I>Rorschach</I> itself in bright, tactical color
codes. Invisible curves and spikes iridesced in ConSensus across any
number of on-demand pigment schemes: gravity, reflectivity,
blackbody emissions. Massive electrical bolts erupting from the tips
of thorns rendered in lemon pastels. User-friendly graphics had
turned <I>Rorschach</I> into a cartoon.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. Please respond.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> growled to stern, fishtailing. On tactical, another
just-plotted piece of debris swept by a discreet six thousand meters
to port.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> to <I>Theseus</I>. If you are unable to
respond, please—<I>holy shit!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The cartoon flickered and died.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd seen what had happened in that last instant, though: Jack
passing near one of those great phantom hoops; a tongue of energy
flicking out, quick as a frog's; a dead feed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I see what you're up to <I>now</I>, you <I>cocksuckers</I>. Do
you think we're fucking <I>blind</I> down here?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha clenched her teeth. &quot;We—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But it <I>fi</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti <I>hissed</I>, from somewhere in the back of his throat. I
had never heard a mammal make a noise quite like that before. Sascha
fell immediately silent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates negotiated with her controls. &quot;I've still got—just
a sec—&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You pull that thing back <I>right fucking now</I>, you hear us?
<I>Right fucking now.</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Got it</I>.&quot; Bates gritted as the feed came back up.
&quot;Just had to reacquire the laser.&quot; The probe had been
kicked wildly off-course—as if someone fording a river had been
caught in sudden undertow and thrown over a waterfall—but it
was still talking, and still mobile.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Barely. Bates struggled to stay the course. Jack staggered and
wobbled uncontrollably though the tightly-wound folds of <I>Rorschach</I>'s
magnetosphere. The artefact loomed huge in its eye. The feed
strobed.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maintain approach,&quot; Sarasti said calmly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Love to,&quot; Bates gritted. &quot;Trying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> skidded again, corkscrewing. I could have sworn I
heard the bearings in the drum <I>grind</I> for a moment. Another
rock sailed past on Tactical.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought you'd <I>plotted</I> those things,&quot; Szpindel
grumbled.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>You want to start a war, Theseus</I>? Is that what you're
trying to do? You think you're up for it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't attack,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe it does.&quot; Bates kept her voice low; I could see the
effort it took. &quot;If <I>Rorschach</I> can control the
trajectories of these—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Normal distribution. Insignificant corrections.&quot; He must
have meant statistically: the torque and grind of the ship's hull
felt pretty significant to the others.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, right,&quot; <I>Rorschach</I> said suddenly. &quot;We get
it <I>now</I>. You don't think there's anyone here, do you? You've
got some high-priced consultant telling you there's nothing to worry
about.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jack was deep in the forest. We'd lost most of the tactical overlays
to reduced baud. In dim visible light <I>Rorschach</I>'s great
ridged spines, each the size of a skyscraper, hashed a nightmare view
on all sides. The feed stuttered as Bates struggled to keep the beam
aligned. ConSensus painted walls and airspace with arcane telemetry.
I had no idea what any of it meant.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You think we're nothing but a <I>Chinese Room</I>,&quot;
<I>Rorschach</I> sneered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jack stumbled towards collision, grasping for something to hang on
to.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Your mistake, <I>Theseus</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It hit something. It stuck.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And suddenly <I>Rorschach</I> snapped into view—no refractory
composites, no profiles or simulations in false color. There it was
at last, naked even to Human eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine a crown of thorns, twisted, dark and unreflective, grown too
thickly tangled to ever rest on any human head. Put it in orbit
around a failed star whose own reflected half-light does little more
than throw its satellites into silhouette. Occasional bloody
highlights glinted like dim embers from its twists and crannies; they
only emphasized the darkness everywhere else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine an artefact that embodies the very notion of torture,
something so wrenched and disfigured that even across uncounted
lightyears and unimaginable differences in biology and outlook, you
can't help but feel that somehow, the structure itself is in pain.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now make it the size of a city.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It flickered as we watched. Lightning arced from recurved spines a
thousand meters long. ConSensus showed us a strobe-lit hellscape,
huge and dark and twisted. The composites had lied. It was not the
least bit beautiful.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now it's too late,&quot; something said from deep inside. &quot;Now
every last one of you is dead. And Susan? You there, Susan?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're taking you <I>first.</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Life's
too short for chess.&quot; </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Byron
</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They never sealed the hatch behind them. It was too easy to get lost
up there in the dome, naked infinite space stretching a hundred
eighty degrees on every axis. They needed all that emptiness but
they needed an anchor in its midst: soft stray light from astern, a
gentle draft from the drum, the sounds of people and machinery close
by. They needed to have it both ways.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I lay in wait. Reading a dozen blatant cues in their behavior, I was
already squirreled away in the forward airlock when they passed. I
gave them a few minutes and crept forward to the darkened bridge.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of course they called her by name,&quot; Szpindel was saying.
&quot;That was the only name they had. She <I>told</I> them,
remember?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes.&quot; Michelle didn't seem reassured.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey, it was <I>you</I> guys said we were talking to a Chinese
Room. You saying you were wrong?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We—no. Of course not.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then it wasn't really threatening Suze at all, was it? It
wasn't threatening any of us. It had no idea what it was saying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's <I>rule-based</I>, Isaac. It was following some kind of
flowchart it drew up by observing Human languages in action. And
somehow those rules told it to respond with threats of violence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But if it doesn't even know what it was saying—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't. It can't. We parsed the phrasing nineteen
different ways, tried out conceptual units of every different
length...&quot; A long, deep breath. &quot;But it attacked the
probe, Isaac.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jack just got too close to one of those electrode thingies is
all. It just arced.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you don't think <I>Rorschach</I> is hostile?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Long silence—long enough to make me wonder if I'd been
detected.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Hostile</I>,&quot; Szpindel said at last. &quot;<I>Friendly</I>.
We learned those words for life on Earth, eh? I don't know if they
even apply out here.&quot; His lips smacked faintly. &quot;But I
think it might be something <I>like</I> hostile.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle sighed. &quot;Isaac, there's no <I>reason</I> for—I
mean, it just doesn't make <I>sense</I> that it would be. We can't
have anything it wants.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It says it wants to be left alone,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;Even
if it doesn't mean it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They floated quietly for a while, up there past the bulkhead.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;At least the shielding held,&quot; Szpindel said finally.
&quot;That's something.&quot; He wasn't just talking about Jack; our
own carapace was coated with the same stuff now. It had depleted our
substrate stockpiles by two thirds, but no one wanted to rely on the
ship's usual magnetics in the face of anything that could play so
easily with the electromagnetic spectrum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If they attack us, what do we do?&quot; Michelle said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Learn what we can, while we can. Fight back. While we can.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>If</I> we can. Look out there, Isaac. I don't care how
<I>embryonic</I> that thing is. Tell me we're not hopelessly
outmatched.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Outmatched, for sure. <I>Hopelessly</I>, never.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's not what you said before.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Still. There's always a way to win.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If I said that, you'd call it wishful thinking.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If you said that, it would be. But I'm saying it, so it's game
theory.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Game theory again. Jesus, Isaac.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, listen. You're thinking about the aliens like they were
some kind of mammal. Something that <I>cares</I>, something that
looks after its investments.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you know they aren't?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Because you can't protect your kids when they're lightyears
away. They're on their own, and it's a big cold dangerous universe
so most of them aren't going to make it, eh? The most you can do is
crank out <I>millions</I> of kids, take cold comfort in knowing that
a few always luck out through random chance. It's not a mammal
mind-set, Meesh. You want an earthbound simile, think of dandelion
seeds. Or, or herring.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A soft sigh. &quot;So they're interstellar herring. That hardly
means they can't crush us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But they don't know about <I>us</I>, not in advance. Dandelion
seed doesn't know what it's up against before it sprouts. Maybe
nothing. Maybe some spastic weed that goes over like straw in the
wind. Or maybe something that kicks its ass halfway to the
Magellanic Clouds. It doesn't <I>know</I>, and there's no such thing
as a one-size-fits-all survival strategy. Something that aces
against one player blows goats against a different one. So the best
you can do is mix up your strategies based on the odds. It's a
weighted dice roll and it gives you the best mean payoff over the
whole game, but you're bound to crap out and choose the wrong
strategy at least some of the time. Price of doing business. And
that means—<I>that</I> means—that weak players not only
<I>can</I> win against stronger ones, but they're statistically <I>bound</I>
to in some cases.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle snorted. &quot;<I>That's</I> your game theory? Rock Paper
Scissors with statistics?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe Szpindel didn't know the reference. He didn't speak, long
enough to call up a subtitle; then he brayed like a horse. &quot;<I>Rock
Paper Scissors</I>! Yes!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle digested that for a moment. &quot;You're sweet for trying,
but that only works if the other side is just blindly playing the
odds, and they don't have to <I>do</I> that if they know who they're
going up against in advance. And my dear, they have so very much
information about <I>us</I>...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They'd threatened Susan. By name.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They don't know everything,&quot; Szpindel insisted. &quot;And
the principle works for <I>any</I> scenario involving incomplete
information, not just the ignorant extreme.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not as well.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But <I>some</I>, and that gives us a chance. Doesn't matter
how good you are at poker when it comes to the deal, eh? Cards still
deal out with the same odds.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So that's what we're playing. Poker.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Be thankful it's not chess. We wouldn't have a hope in hell.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey. <I>I'm</I> supposed to be the optimist in this
relationship.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You are. I'm just fatalistically cheerful. We all come into
the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're
all gonna die before it ends.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's my Isaac. Master of the no-win scenario.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You can win. Winner's the guy who makes the best guess on how
it all comes out.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you <I>are</I> just guessing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yup. And you can't make an informed guess without data, eh?
And we could be the very first to find out what's gonna happen to the
whole Human race. I'd say that puts us into the semifinals, easy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle didn't answer for a very long time. When she did, I
couldn't hear her words.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Neither could Szpindel: &quot;Sorry?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Covert</I> to <I>invulnerable</I>, you said. Remember?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Uh huh. <I>Rorschach</I>'s Graduation Day. &quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How soon, do you think?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No idea. But I don't think it's the kind of thing that's gonna
slip by unnoticed. And that's why I don't think it attacked us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She must have looked a question.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Because when it does, it won't be some debatable candy-ass
bitch slap,&quot; he told her. &quot;When that fucker rises up,
we're gonna <I>know</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A sudden flicker from behind. I spun in the cramped passageway and
bit down on a cry: something squirmed out of sight around the
corner, something with <I>arms</I>, barely glimpsed, gone in an
instant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Never there. Couldn't be there. Impossible.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did you hear that?&quot; Szpindel asked, but I'd fled to stern
before Michelle could answer him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We'd fallen so far that the naked eye didn't see a disk, barely even
saw curvature<I> </I>any more. We were falling towards a <I>wall</I>,
a vast roiling expanse of dark thunderclouds that extended in all
directions to some new, infinitely-distant horizon. Ben filled half
the universe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And still we fell.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Far below, Jack clung to <I>Rorschach</I>'s ridged surface with
bristly gecko-feet fenders and set up camp. It sent x-rays and
ultrasound into the ground, tapped enquiring fingers and listened to
the echos, planted tiny explosive charges and measured the resonance
of their detonations. It shed seeds like pollen: tiny probes and
sensors by the thousands, self-powered, near-sighted, stupid and
expendable. The vast majority were sacrificial offerings to random
chance; only one in a hundred lasted long enough to return usable
telemetry.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
While our advance scout took measure of its local neighborhood,
<I>Theseus</I> drew larger-scale birdseye maps from the closing sky.
It spat out thousands of its own disposable probes, spread them
across the heavens and collected stereoscopic data from a thousand
simultaneous perspectives.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Patchwork insights assembled in the drum. <I>Rorschach</I>'s skin
was sixty percent superconducting carbon nanotube. <I>Rorschach</I>'s
guts were largely hollow; at least some of those hollows appeared to
contain an atmosphere. No earthly form of life would have lasted a
second in there, though; intricate topographies of radiation and
electromagnetic force seethed around the structure, seethed within
it. In some places the radiation was intense enough to turn
unshielded flesh to ash in an instant; calmer backwaters would merely
kill in the same span of time. Charged particles raced around
invisible racetracks at relativistic speeds, erupting from jagged
openings, hugging curves of magnetic force strong enough for neutron
stars, arcing through open space and plunging back into black mass.
Occasional protuberances swelled and burst and released clouds of
microparticulates, seeding the radiation belts like spores.
<I>Rorschach</I> resembled nothing so much as a nest of half-naked
cyclotrons, tangled one with another.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Neither Jack below nor <I>Theseus</I> above could find any points of
entry, beyond those impassable gaps that spat out streams of charged
particles or swallowed them back down. No airlocks or hatches or
viewports resolved with increasing proximity. The fact that we'd
been threatened via laser beam implied some kind of optical antennae
or tightcast array; we weren't even able to find that much.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A central hallmark of von Neumann machines was self-replication.
Whether <I>Rorschach</I> would meet that criterion—whether it
would germinate, or divide, or give birth when it passed some
critical threshold—whether it had done so already—remained
an open question.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One of a thousand. At the end of it all—after all the
measurements, the theorizing and deduction and outright guesswork—we
settled into orbit with a million trivial details and no answers. In
terms of the big questions, there was only one thing we knew for
sure.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So far, <I>Rorschach</I> was holding its fire.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It sounded to <I>me</I> like it knew what it was saying,&quot;
I remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I guess that's the whole point,&quot; Bates said. She had no
one to confide in, partook of no intimate dialogs that could be
overheard. With her, I used the direct approach.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> was birthing a litter, two by two. They were
nasty-looking things, armored, squashed egg-shapes, twice the size of
a human torso and studded with gardening implements: antennae,
optical ports, retractable threadsaws. Weapons muzzles.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates was summoning her troops. We floated before the primary fab
port at the base of <I>Theseus</I>' spine. The plant could just as
easily have disgorged the grunts directly into the hold beneath the
carapace—that was where they'd be stored anyway, until called
upon—but Bates was giving each a visual inspection before
sending it through one of the airlocks a few meters up the
passageway. Ritual, perhaps. Military tradition. Certainly there
was nothing she could see with her eyes that wouldn't be glaringly
obvious to the most basic diagnostic.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Would it be a problem?&quot; I asked. &quot;Running them
without your interface?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Run themselves just fine. Response time actually improves
without spam in the network. I'm more of a safety precaution.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> growled, giving us more attitude. The plating
trembled to stern; another piece of local debris, no longer in our
path. We were angling towards an equatorial orbit just a few
miniscule kilometers above the artefact; insanely, the approach
curved right through the accretion belt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It didn't bother the others. &quot;Like surviving traffic in a high
speed lane,&quot; Sascha had said, disdainful of my misgivings. &quot;Try
creeping across and you're road kill. Gotta speed up, go with the
flow.&quot; But the flow was turbulent; we hadn't gone five minutes
without a course correction since <I>Rorschach</I> had stopped
talking to us.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So, do you buy it?&quot; I asked. &quot;Pattern-matching,
empty threats? Nothing to worry about?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nobody's fired on us yet,&quot; she said. Meaning: <I>Not for
a second</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's your take on Susan's argument? Different niches, no
reason for conflict?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Makes sense, I guess.&quot; <I>Utter bullshit</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can you think of any reason why something with such different
needs <I>would</I> attack us?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That depends,&quot; she said, &quot;on whether the fact that we
<I>are</I> different is reason enough.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I saw playground battlefields reflected in her topology. I
remembered my own, and wondered if there were any other kind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Then again, that only proved the point. Humans didn't <I>really</I>
fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for
kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines
and limited resources.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think Isaac would say this is different,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I guess.&quot; Bates sent one grunt humming off to the hold;
two more emerged in formation, spinelight glinting off their armor.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How many of these are you making, anyway?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're breaking and entering, Siri. Not wise to leave our own
house unguarded.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I inspected her surfaces as she inspected theirs. Doubt and
resentment simmered just beneath.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're in a tough spot,&quot; I remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We all are.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But you're responsible for defending us, against something we
don't know anything about. We're only guessing that—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sarasti doesn't <I>guess</I>,&quot; Bates said. &quot;The
man's in charge for a reason. Doesn't make much sense to question
his orders, given we're all about a hundred IQ points short of
understanding the answer anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And yet he's also got that whole predatory side nobody talks
about,&quot; I remarked. &quot;It must be difficult for him, all
that intellect coexisting with so much instinctive aggression.
Making sure the right part wins.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She wondered in that instant whether Sarasti might be listening in.
She decided in the next that it didn't matter: why should he care
what the cattle thought, as long as they did what they were told?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
All she said was, &quot;I thought you jargonauts weren't supposed to
have opinions.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That wasn't mine.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates paused. Returned to her inspection.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You do know what I do,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Uh huh.&quot; The first of the current pair passed muster and
hummed off up the spine. She turned to the second. &quot;You
simplify things. So the folks back home can understand what the
specialists are up to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's part of it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't need a translator, Siri. I'm just a consultant,
assuming things go well. A bodyguard if they don't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're an officer and a military expert. I'd say that makes
you more than qualified when it comes to assessing <I>Rorschach</I>'s
threat potential.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm muscle. Shouldn't you be <I>simplifying</I> Jukka or
Isaac?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's exactly what I'm doing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She looked at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You <I>interact</I>,&quot; I said. &quot;Every component of
the system affects every other. Processing Sarasti without
factoring you in would be like trying to calculate acceleration while
ignoring mass.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She turned back to her brood. Another robot passed muster.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She didn't hate <I>me</I>. What she hated was what my presence
implied.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>They don't trust us to speak for ourselves</I>, she wouldn't say.
<I>No matter how qualified we are, no matter how far ahead of the pack.
Maybe even </I>because<I> of that. We're contaminated. We're
subjective. So they send Siri Keeton to tell them what we </I>really<I>
mean.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I get it,&quot; I said after a moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not about trust, Major. It's about <I>location</I>.
Nobody gets a good view of a system from the inside, no matter who
they are. The view's distorted.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And yours isn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm outside the system.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're interacting with me now.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As an observer only. Perfection's unattainable but it isn't
<I>unapproachable</I>, you know? I don't play a role in
decision-making or research, I don't interfere in any aspect of the
mission that I'm assigned to study. But of course I ask questions.
The more information I have, the better my analysis.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought you didn't have to <I>ask</I>. I thought you guys
could just, read the signs or something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Every bit helps. It all goes into the mix.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You doing it now? <I>Synthesizing</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And you do this without any specialized knowledge at all.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm as much of a specialist as you. I specialize in processing
informational topologies.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Without understanding their content.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Understanding the shapes is enough.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates seemed to find some small imperfection in the battlebot under
scrutiny, scratched at its shell with a fingernail. &quot;Software
couldn't do that without your help?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Software can do a lot of things. We've chosen to do some for
ourselves.&quot; I nodded at the grunt. &quot;Your visual
inspections, for example.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She smiled faintly, conceding the point.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So I'd encourage you to speak freely. You know I'm sworn to
confidentiality.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks,&quot; she said, meaning <I>On this ship, there's no
such thing.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> chimed. Sarasti spoke in its wake: &quot;Orbital
insertion in fifteen minutes. Everyone to the drum in five.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well,&quot; Bates said, sending one last grunt on its way.
&quot;Here we go.&quot; She pushed off and sailed up the spine.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The newborn killing machines clicked at me. They smelled like new
cars.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;By the way,&quot; Bates called over her shoulder, &quot;you
missed the obvious one.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sorry?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She spun a hundred-eighty degrees at the end of the passageway,
landed like an acrobat beside the drum hatch. &quot;The reason. Why
something would attack us even if we didn't have anything it wanted.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I read it off her: &quot;If it wasn't attacking at all. If it was
defending itself.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You asked about Sarasti. Smart man. Strong Leader. Maybe
could spend a little more time with the troops.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Vampire doesn't respect his command. Doesn't listen to advice.
Hides away half the time. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I remembered transient killer whales. &quot;Maybe he's being
considerate.&quot; <I> He knows he makes us nervous.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm sure that's it,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Vampire doesn't trust himself.</I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't just Sarasti. They <I>all</I> hid from us, even when they
had the upper hand. They always stayed just the other side of myth.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It started pretty much the same way it did for anything else;
vampires were far from the first to learn the virtues of energy
conservation. Shrews and hummingbirds, saddled with tiny bodies and
overclocked metabolic engines, would have starved to death overnight
if not for the torpor that overtook them at sundown. Comatose
elephant seals lurked breathless at the bottom of the sea, rousing
only for passing prey or redline lactate levels. Bears and chipmunks
cut costs by sleeping away the impoverished winter months, and
lungfish—Devonian black belts in the art of estivation—could
curl up and die for years, waiting for the rains.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
With vampires it was a little different. It wasn't shortness of
breath, or metabolic overdrive, or some blanket of snow that locked
the pantry every winter. The problem wasn't so much a lack of prey
as a lack of <I>difference</I> from it; vampires were such a recent
split from the ancestral baseline that the reproductive rates hadn't
diverged. This was no woodland-variety lynx-hare dynamic, where prey
outnumbered predators a hundred to one. Vampires fed on things that
bred barely faster than they did. They would have wiped out their
own food supply in no time if they hadn't learned how to ease off on
the throttle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time they went extinct they'd learned to shut down for
<I>decades</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It made two kinds of sense. It not only slashed their metabolic
needs while prey bred itself back to harvestable levels, it gave us
time to forget that we <I>were</I> prey. We were so smart by the
Pleistocene, smart enough for easy skepticism; if you haven't seen
any night-stalking demons in all your years on the savannah, why
should you believe some senile campfire ramblings passed down by your
mother's mother?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was murder on our ancestors, even if those same enemy
genes—co-opted now—served us so well when we left the sun
a half-million years later. But it was almost—heartening, I
guess—to think that maybe Sarasti felt the tug of other genes,
some aversion to prolonged visibility shaped by generations of
natural selection. Maybe he spent every moment in our company
fighting voices that urged him to <I>hide, hide, let them forget</I>.
Maybe he retreated when they got too loud, maybe we made him as
uneasy as he made us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We could always hope.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Our final orbit combined discretion and valor in equal measure.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I> described a perfect equatorial circle 87,900 km from
Big Ben's center of gravity. Sarasti was unwilling to let it out of
sight, and you didn't have to be a vampire to mistrust relay sats
when swinging through a radiation-soaked blizzard of rock and
machinery. The obvious alternative was to match orbits.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At the same time, all the debate over whether or not <I>Rorschach</I>
had meant—or even understood—the threats it had made was
a bit beside the point. Counterintrusion measures were a distinct
possibility either way, and ongoing proximity only increased the
risk. So Sarasti had derived some optimum compromise, a mildly
eccentric orbit that nearly brushed the artefact at perigee but kept
a discreet distance the rest of the time. It was a longer trajectory
than <I>Rorschach</I>'s, and higher—we<I> </I>had to burn on
the descending arc to keep in synch—but the end result was
continuously line-of-sight, and only brought us within striking
distance for three hours either side of bottoming out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Our</I> striking distance, that is. For all we knew <I>Rorschach</I>
could have reached out and swatted us from the sky before we'd even
left the solar system.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti gave the command from his tent. ConSensus carried his voice
into the drum as <I>Theseus</I> coasted to apogee: &quot;Now.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jack had erected a tent about itself, a blister glued to <I>Rorschach</I>'s
hull and blown semi-taut against vacuum with the merest whiff of
nitrogen. Now it brought lasers to bear and started digging; if we'd
read the vibrations right, the ground should be only thirty-four
centimeters deep beneath its feet. The beams stuttered as they cut,
despite six millimeters of doped shielding.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Son of a bitch,&quot; Szpindel murmured. &quot;It's <I>working</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We burned through tough fibrous epidermis. We burned through veins
of insulation that might have been some sort of programmable
asbestos. We burned through alternating layers of superconducting
mesh, and the strata of flaking carbon separating them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We burned <I>through</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The lasers shut down instantly. Within seconds <I>Rorschach</I>'s
intestinal gases had blown taut the skin of the tent. Black carbon
smoke swirled and danced in sudden thick atmosphere.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nothing shot back at us. Nothing reacted. Partial pressures piled
up on ConSensus: methane, ammonia, hydrogen. Lots of water vapor,
freezing as fast as it registered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel grunted. &quot;Reducing atmosphere. Pre-Snowball.&quot;
He sounded disappointed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe it's a work in progress,&quot; James suggested. &quot;Like
the structure itself.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jack stuck out its tongue, a giant mechanical sperm with a
myo-optical tail. Its head was a thick-skinned lozenge, at least
half ceramic shielding by cross-section; the tiny payload of sensors
at its core was rudimentary, but small enough for the whole assembly
to thread through the pencil-thin hole the laser had cut. It
unspooled down the hole, rimming <I>Rorschach</I>'s newly-torn
orifice.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Dark down there,&quot; James observed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates: &quot;But warm.&quot; 281<FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61616;</FONT>K.
Above freezing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The endoscope emerged into darkness. Infrared served up a grainy
grayscale of a — a tunnel, it looked like, replete with mist
and exotic rock formations. The walls curved like honeycomb, like
the insides of fossilized intestine. Cul-de-sacs and branches
proliferated down the passage. The basic substrate appeared to be a
dense pastry of carbon-fiber leaves. Some of the gaps between those
layers were barely thick as fingernails; others looked wide enough to
stack bodies.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ladies and gentlemen,&quot; Szpindel said softly, &quot;The
Devil's Baklava.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could have sworn I saw something move. I could have sworn it
looked familiar.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The camera died.</P>

<br><br><br><a name="Rorschach"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a><br><br><br>

<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Rorschach</H2>

<br><br><br>

<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-before: always">
&quot;<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Mothers
are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more
certain they are their own.&quot; </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Aristotle</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't say goodbye to Dad. I didn't even know where he was.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't <I>want</I> to say goodbye to Helen. I didn't want to go
back there. That was the problem: I didn't have to. There was
nowhere left in the world where the mountain couldn't simply pick up
and move to Mohammed. Heaven was merely a suburb of the global
village, and the global village left me no excuse.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I linked from my own apartment. My new inlays—mission-specific,
slid into my head just the week before—shook hands with the
noosphere and knocked upon the Pearly Gates. Some tame spirit, more
plausible than Saint Peter if no less ethereal, took a message and
disappeared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And I was <I>inside</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This was no antechamber, no visiting room. Heaven was not intended
for the casual visitor; any paradise in which the flesh-constrained
would feel at home would have been intolerably pedestrian to the
disembodied souls who lived there. Of course, there was no reason
why visitor and resident had to share the same view. I could have
pulled any conventional worldview off the shelf if I'd wanted, seen
this place rendered in any style I chose. Except for the Ascended
themselves, of course. That was one of the perks of the Afterlife:
only <I>they</I> got to choose the face we saw.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But the thing my mother had become <I>had </I>no face, and I was
damned if she was going to see me hide behind some mask.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hello, Helen.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri! What a wonderful surprise!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She was an abstraction in an abstraction: an impossible intersection
of dozens of bright panes, as if the disassembled tiles of a
stained-glass window had each been set aglow and animated. She
swirled before me like a school of fish. Her world echoed her body:
lights and angles and three-dimensional Escher impossibilities, piled
like bright thunderheads. And yet, somehow I would have recognised
her anywhere. Heaven was a dream; only upon waking do you realize
that the characters you encountered looked nothing like they do in
real life.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was only one familiar landmark anywhere in the whole sensorium.
My mother's heaven smelled of cinnamon.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I beheld her luminous avatar and imagined the corpus soaking in a
tank of nutrients, deep underground. &quot;How are you doing?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Very well. <I>Very</I> well. Of course, it takes a little
getting used to, knowing your mind isn't quite <I>yours</I> any
more.&quot; Heaven didn't just feed the brains of its residents; it
fed <I>off </I> them, used the surplus power of idle synapses to run
its own infrastructure. &quot;You <I>have</I> to move in here,
sooner better than later. You'll never leave.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Actually, I <I>am</I> leaving,&quot; I said. &quot;We're
shipping out tomorrow.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shipping out?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The Kuiper. You know. The Fireflies?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh yes. I think I heard something about that. We don't get
much news from the outside world, you know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway, just thought I'd call in and say goodbye.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm glad you did. I've been hoping to see you without, you
know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Without what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You know. Without your father listening in.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Dad's in the field, Helen. Interplanetary crisis. You might
have heard something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I certainly have. You know, I haven't always been happy about
your father's—extended assignments, but maybe it was really a
blessing in disguise. The less he was around, the less he could do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To you.&quot; The apparition stilled for a few moments,
feigning hesitation. &quot;I've never told you this before, but—no.
I shouldn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shouldn't what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Bring up, well, old hurts.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What old hurts?&quot; Right on cue. I couldn't help myself,
the training went too deep. I always barked on command.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well,&quot; she began, &quot;sometimes you'd come back—you
were so very young—and your face would be so set and hard, and
I'd wonder why are you so <I>angry</I>, little boy? What can someone
so young have to be so angry about?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Helen, what are you talking about? Back from where?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just from the places he'd take you.&quot; Something like a
shiver passed across her facets. &quot;He was still around back
then. He wasn't so <I>important</I>, he was just an accountant with
a karate fetish, going on about forensics and game theory and
astronomy until he put everyone to sleep.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to imagine it: my father, the chatterbox. &quot;That
doesn't sound like Dad.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well of course not. You were too young to remember, but he was
just a little man, then. He still is, really, under all the secret
missions and classified briefings. I've never understood why people
never saw that. But even back then he liked to—well, it wasn't
his fault, I suppose. He had a very difficult childhood, and he
never learned to deal with problems like an adult. He, well, he'd
throw his weight around, I guess you'd say. Of course I didn't know
that before we married. If I had, I—but I made a commitment.
I made a commitment, and I never broke it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, are you saying you were abused?&quot; <I>Back from the
places he'd take you</I>. &quot;Are—are you saying <I>I</I>
was?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There are all kinds of abuse, Siri. Words can hurt more than
bullets, sometimes. And child abandonment—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He didn't abandon me.&quot; <I>He left me with </I>you<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He abandoned <I>us</I>, Siri. Sometimes for months at a time,
and I—and we never knew if he was coming back And he <I>chose</I>
to do that to us, Siri. He didn't <I>need</I> that job, there were
so many other things he was qualified to do. Things that had been
redundant for years.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shook my head, incredulous, unable to say it aloud: she hated him
because he hadn't had the good grace to grow <I>unnecessary</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not Dad's fault that planetary security is still an
essential service,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She continued as if she hadn't heard. &quot;Now there was a time
when it was unavoidable, when people our age <I>had</I> to work just
to make ends meet. But even back then people <I>wanted</I> to spend
time with their families. Even if they couldn't afford to. To, to
<I>choose</I> to stay working when it isn't even <I>necessary</I>,
that's—&quot; She shattered and reassembled at my shoulder.
&quot;Yes, Siri. I believe that's a kind of abuse. And if your
father had been half as loyal to me as I've been to him all these
years...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I remembered Jim, the last time I'd seen him: snorting vassopressin
under the restless eyes of robot sentries. &quot;I don't think Dad's
been disloyal to either of us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Helen sighed. &quot;I don't really expect you to understand. I'm
not completely stupid, I've seen how it played out. I pretty much
had to raise you myself all these years. I always had to play the
heavy, always had to be the one to hand out the discipline because
your father was off on some <I>secret assignment</I>. And then he'd
come home for a week or two and he was the golden-haired boy just
because he'd seen fit to drop in. I don't really blame you for that
any more than I blame him. Blame doesn't solve anything at this
stage. I just thought—well, really, I thought you ought to
know. Take it for what it's worth.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A memory, unbidden: called into Helen's bed when I was nine, her
hand stroking my scar, her stale sweet breath stirring against my
cheek. <I>You're the man of the house now Siri. We can't count on
your father any more. It's just you and me...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't say anything for a while. Finally: &quot;Didn't it help at
all?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I glanced around at all that customized abstraction: internal
feedback, lucidly dreamed. &quot;You're omnipotent in here. Desire
anything, imagine anything; there it is. I'd thought it would have
<I>changed</I> you more.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Rainbow tiles danced, and forced a laugh. &quot;This isn't enough of
a <I>change</I> for you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not nearly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because Heaven had a catch. No matter how many constructs and
avatars Helen built in there, no matter how many empty vessels sang
her praises or commiserated over the injustices she'd suffered, when
it came right down to it she was only talking to herself. There were
other realities over which she had no control, other people who
didn't play by her rules—and if they thought of Helen at all,
they thought as they damn well pleased.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She could go the rest of her life without ever meeting any of them.
But she knew they were out there, and it drove her crazy. Taking my
leave of Heaven, it occurred to me that omnipotent though she was,
there was only one way my mother would ever be truly happy in her
own personal creation.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The rest of creation would have to go.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;This shouldn't keep happening,&quot; Bates said. &quot;The
shielding was good.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang was up across the drum, squaring away something in their
tent. Sarasti lurked offstage today, monitoring the proceedings from
his quarters. That left me with Bates and Szpindel in the Commons.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe against direct EM.&quot; Szpindel stretched, stifled a
yawn. &quot;Ultrasound boots up magnetic fields through shielding
sometimes, in living tissue at least. Any chance something like that
could be happening with your electronics?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates spread her hands. &quot;Who knows? Might as well be black
magic and elves down there.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, it's not a total wash. We can make a few smart guesses,
eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Such as.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel raised one finger. &quot;The layers we cut through couldn't
result from any metabolic process <I>I</I> know about. So it's not
'alive', not in the biological sense. Not that that means anything
these days,&quot; he added, glancing around the belly of our beast.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What about life <I>inside</I> the structure?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anoxic atmosphere. Probably rules out complex multicellular
life. Microbes, maybe, although if so I wish to hell they show up in
the samples. But anything complex enough to think, let alone build
something like <I>that</I>&quot;—a wave at the image in
ConSensus—&quot;is gonna need a high-energy metabolism, and
that means oxygen.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you think it's empty?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Didn't say that, did I? I know aliens are supposed to be all
mysterious and everything, but I still don't see why <I>anyone</I>
would build a city-sized wildlife refuge for anaerobic microbes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's got to be a habitat for <I>something</I>. Why any
atmosphere at all, if it's just some kind of terraforming machine?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel pointed up at the Gang's tent. &quot;What Susan said.
Atmosphere's still under construction and we get a free ride until
the owners show up.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Free?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Free<I>ish</I>. And I know we've only seen a fraction of a
fraction of what's inside. But something obviously saw us coming.
It yelled at us, as I recall. If they're smart and they're hostile,
why aren't they shooting?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe they are.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If something's hiding down the hall wrecking your robots, it's
not frying them any faster than the baseline environment would do
anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What you call a <I>baseline environment</I> might be an active
counterintrusion measure. Why else would a <I>habitat</I> be so
uninhabitable?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel rolled his eyes. &quot;Okay, I was wrong. We <I>don't</I>
know enough to make a few smart guesses.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not that we hadn't tried. Once Jack's sensor head had been
irreparably fried, we'd relegated it to surface excavation; it had
widened the bore in infinitesimal increments, patiently burning back
the edges of our initial peephole until it measured almost a meter
across. Meanwhile we'd customized Bates's grunts—shielded them
against nuclear reactors and the insides of cyclotrons—and come
perigee we'd thrown them at <I>Rorschach</I> like stones chucked into
a haunted forest. Each had gone through Jack's portal, unspooling
whisker-thin fiberop behind them to pass intelligence through the
charged atmosphere.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They'd sent glimpses, mostly. A few extended vignettes. We'd seen
<I>Rorschach</I>'s walls move, slow lazy waves of peristalsis
rippling along its gut. We'd seen treacly invaginations in
progress, painstaking constrictions that would presumably, given
time, seal off a passageway. Our grunts had sailed through some
quarters, staggered through others where the magnetic ambience threw
them off balance. They'd passed through strange throats lined with
razor-thin teeth, thousands of triangular blades in parallel rows,
helically twisted. They'd edged cautiously around clouds of mist
sculpted into abstract fractal shapes, shifting and endlessly
recursive, their charged droplets strung along a myriad converging
lines of electromagnetic force.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ultimately, every one of them had died or disappeared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Any way to increase the shielding?&quot; I wondered.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel gave me a look.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We've shielded everything except the sensor heads,&quot; Bates
explained. &quot;If we shield <I>those</I> we're blind.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But visible light's harmless enough. What about purely optical
li—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're <I>using</I> optical links, commissar,&quot; Szpindel
snapped. &quot;And you may have noticed the shit's getting through
anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But aren't there, you know—&quot; I groped for the word—
&quot;bandpass filters? Something that lets visible wavelengths
through, cuts out the lethal stuff on both sides?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He snorted. &quot;Sure. It's called an atmosphere, and if we'd
brought one with us—about fifty times deeper than Earth's—
it <I>might</I> block some of that soup down there. Course, Earth
also gets a lot of help from its magnetic field, but I'm not betting
my life on any EM we set up in <I>that</I> place.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If we didn't keep running into these <I>spikes</I>,&quot; Bates
said. &quot;That's the real problem.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are they random?&quot; I wondered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's shrug was half shiver. &quot;I don't think anything about
that place is random. But who knows? We need more data.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Which we're not likely to get,&quot; James said, walking around
the ceiling to join us, &quot;if our drones keep shorting out.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The conditional was pure formality. We'd tried playing the odds,
sacrificing drone after drone in the hope that one of them would get
lucky; survival rates tailed exponentially to zero with distance from
base camp. We'd tried shielding the fiberop to reduce aperture
leakage; the resulting tethers were stiff and unwieldy, wrapped in
so many layers of ferroceramic that we were virtually waving the bots
around on the end of a stick. We'd tried cutting the tethers
entirely, sending the machines out to explore on their own, squinting
against the radiant blizzard and storing their findings for later
download; none had returned. We'd tried everything.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We can go in ourselves,&quot; James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Almost everything.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Right,&quot; Szpindel replied in a voice that couldn't mean
anything but <I>wrong</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's the only way to learn anything useful.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. Like how many seconds it would take your brain to turn
into synchrotron soup.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Our suits can be shielded.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, you mean like Mandy's drones?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'd really rather you didn't call me that,&quot; Bates
remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The point is, <I>Rorschach</I> kills you whether you're meat or
mechanical.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>My</I> point is that it kills meat <I>differently</I>,&quot;
James replied. &quot;It takes longer.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shook his head. &quot;You'd be good as dead in fifty
minutes. Even shielded. Even in the so-called cool zones.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And completely asymptomatic for three hours or more. And even
after that it would take days for us to actually die <I>and we'd be
back here long before then</I>, and the ship could patch us up just
like that. <I>We</I> even know that much, Isaac, it's right there in
ConSensus. And if we know it, you know it. So we shouldn't even be
having this argument.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's your solution? We saturate ourselves with radiation
every thirty hours and then I get to cut out the tumors and stitch
everyone's cells back together?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The pods are automatic. You wouldn't have to lift a finger.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not to mention the number those magnetic fields would do on
your <I>brain</I>. We'd be hallucinating from the moment we—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Faraday the suits.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah, so we go in deaf dumb and blind. Good idea.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We can let light pass. Infrared—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's all <I>EM</I>, Suze. Even if we blacked out our helmets
completely and used a camera feed, we'd get leakage where the wire
went through.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Some, yes. But it'd be better than—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jesus.&quot; A tremor sent spittle sailing from the corner of
Szpindel's mouth. &quot;Let me talk to Mi—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I've discussed it with the rest of the gang, Isaac. We're all
agreed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>All</I> agreed? You don't have a working majority in there,
Suze. Just because you cut your brain into pieces doesn't mean they
each get a vote.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't see why not. We're each at least as sentient as you
are.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're all <I>you</I>. Just partitioned.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't seem to have any trouble treating Michelle as a
separate individual.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Michelle's—I mean, yes, you're all very different <I>facets</I>,
but there's only one original. Your alters—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Don't call us that</I>.&quot; Sascha erupted with a voice
cold as LOX. &quot;<I>Ever</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel tried to pull back. &quot;I didn't mean—you know I
didn't—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Sascha was gone. &quot;What are you saying?&quot; said the
softer voice in her wake. &quot;Do you think I'm just, I'm just <I>Mom</I>,
play-acting? You think when we're together you're alone with <I>her</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Michelle,&quot; Szpindel said miserably. &quot;No. What I
think—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Doesn't matter,&quot; Sarasti said. &quot;We don't <I>vote</I>
here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He floated above us, visored and unreadable in the center of the
drum. None of us had seen him arrive. He turned slowly on his axis,
keeping us in view as we rotated around him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Prepping <I>Scylla</I>. Amanda needs two untethered grunts
with precautionary armament. Cams from one to a million Angstroms,
shielded tympanics, no autonomous circuitry. Platelet boosters,
dimenhydrinate and potassium iodide for everyone by 1350.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Everyone?&quot; Bates asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti nodded. &quot;Window opens four hours twenty-three.&quot;
He turned back down the spine</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not me,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti paused.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't participate in field ops,&quot; I reminded him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now you do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm a <I>synthesist</I>.&quot; He knew that. Of course he
knew, everyone did: you can't observe the system unless you stay
<I>outside </I>the system.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;On Earth you're a synthesist,&quot; he said. &quot;In the
Kuiper you're a synthesist. Here you're mass. Do what you're told.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He disappeared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Welcome to the big picture,&quot; Bates said softly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at her as the rest of the group broke up. &quot;You know
I—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're a long way out, Siri. Can't wait fourteen months for
feedback from your bosses, and you know it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She leapt from a standing start, arced smoothly through holograms
into the weightless core of the drum. But then she stopped herself,
as if distracted by some sudden insight. She grabbed a spinal
conduit and swung back to face me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You shouldn't sell yourself short,&quot; she said. &quot;Or
Sarasti either. You're an observer, right? It's a safe bet there's
going to be a lot down there worth observing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;quot;Thanks,&quot; I said. But I already knew why Sarasti was
sending me into <I>Rorschach</I>, and there was more to it than
<I>observation</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Three valuable agents in harm's way. A decoy bought one-in-four odds
that an enemy would aim somewhere else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;The
Lord will take control of you. You will dance and shout and become a
different person.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">1
Samuel 10:6</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We were probably fractured during most of our evolution,&quot;
James once told me, back when we were all still getting acquainted.
She tapped her temple. &quot;There's a lot of room up here; a
modern brain can run dozens of sentient cores without getting too
crowded. And parallel multitasking has obvious survival advantages.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded. &quot;Ten heads are better than one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Our integration may have actually occurred quite recently.
Some experts think we can still revert to multiples under the right
circumstances.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, of course. You're living proof.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook their head. &quot;I'm not talking about <I>physical </I>
partitioning. We're the state of the art, certainly, but
theoretically surgery isn't even necessary. Simple stress could do
something like it, if it was strong enough. If it happened early in
childhood.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No kidding.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, in theory,&quot; James admitted, and changed into Sascha
who said, &quot;Bull<I>shit in theory</I>. There's documented cases
as recently as fifty years ago.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Really.&quot; I resisted the temptation to look it up on my
inlays; the unfocused eyes can be a giveaway. &quot;I didn't know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well it's not like anyone talks about it <I>now</I>. People
were fucking <I>barbarians</I> about multicores back then—called
it a <I>disorder</I>, treated it like some kind of disease. And
their idea of a cure was to keep one of the cores and murder all the
others. Not that they called it <I>murder</I>, of course. They
called it <I>integration</I> or some shit. That's what people did
back then: created other people to suck up all the abuse and torture,
then got rid of them when they weren't needed any more.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It hadn't been the tone most of us were looking for at an
ice-breaking party. James had gently eased back into the driver's
seat and the conversation had steered closer to community standards.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I hadn't heard any of the Gang use <I>alter</I> to describe each
other, then or since. It had seemed innocuous enough when Szpindel
had said it. I wondered why they'd taken such offence—and now,
floating alone in my tent with a few pre-op minutes to kill, there
was no one to see my eyes glaze.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Alter</I> carried baggage over a century old, ConSensus told me.
Sascha was right; there'd been a time when MCC was MPD, a <I>Disorder</I>
rather than a <I>Complex</I>, and it had <I>never</I> been induced
deliberately. According to the experts of that time, multiple
personalities arose spontaneously from unimaginable cauldrons of
abuse—fragmentary personae offered up to suffer rapes and
beatings while the child behind took to some unknowable sanctuary in
the folds of the brain. It was both survival strategy and ritual
self-sacrifice: powerless souls hacking themselves to pieces,
offering up quivering chunks of self in the desperate hope that the
vengeful gods called <I>Mom</I> or <I>Dad</I> might not be
insatiable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
None of it had been real, as it turned out. Or at least, none of it
had been confirmed. The experts of the day had been little more than
witch doctors dancing through improvised rituals: meandering
free-form interviews full of leading questions and nonverbal cues,
scavenger hunts through regurgitated childhoods. Sometimes a shot of
lithium or haloperidol when the beads and rattles didn't work. The
technology to map minds was barely off the ground; the technology to
edit them was years away. So the <I>therapists</I> and <I>psychiatrists</I>
poked at their victims and invented names for things they didn't
understand, and argued over the shrines of Freud and Klein and the
old Astrologers. Doing their very best to sound like practitioners
of Science.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Inevitably, it was Science that turned them all into road kill; MPD
was a half-forgotten fad even before the advent of synaptic rewiring.
But <I>alter</I> was a word from that time, and its resonance had
persisted. Among those who remembered the tale, <I>alter</I> was
codespeak for <I>betrayal</I> and <I>human sacrifice</I>. <I>Alter</I>
meant <I>cannon fodder</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagining the topology of the Gang's coexisting souls, I could see
why Sascha embraced the mythology. I could see why Susan let her.
After all, there was nothing implausible about the concept; the
Gang's very existence proved that much. And when you've been peeled
off from a pre-existing entity, sculpted from nonexistence straight
into adulthood—a mere fragment of personhood, without even a
full-time body to call your own—you can be forgiven a certain
amount of anger. Sure you're all equal, all in it together. Sure,
no persona is better than any other. Susan's still the only one with
a surname.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Better to direct that resentment at old grudges, real or imagined;
less problematic, at least, than taking it out on someone who shares
the same flesh.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I realized something else, too. Surrounded by displays documenting
the relentless growth of the leviathan beneath us, I could not only
see why Sascha had objected to the word; I could also see why Isaac
Szpindel, no doubt unconsciously, had spoken it in the first place.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
As far as Earth was concerned, everyone on <I>Theseus</I> was an
alter.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti stayed behind. He hadn't come with a backup.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There were the rest of us, though, crammed into the shuttle, embedded
in custom spacesuits so padded with shielding we might have been
deep-sea divers from a previous century. It was a fine balance; too
much shielding would have been worse than none at all, would split
primary particles into secondary ones, just as lethal and twice as
numerous. Sometimes you had to live with moderate exposure; the only
alternative was to embed yourself like a bug in lead.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We launched six hours from perigee. <I>Scylla</I> raced on ahead
like an eager child, leaving its parent behind. There was no
eagerness in the systems around me, though. Except for one: the
Gang of Four almost <I>shimmered</I> behind her faceplate.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Excited?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha answered: &quot;Fuckin' <I>right</I>. <I>Field </I>work,
Keeton. First contact.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What if there's nobody there?&quot; <I>What if there is, and
they don't like us?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Even better. We get a crack at their signs and cereal boxes
without their traffic cops leaning over our shoulders.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I wondered if she spoke for the others. I was pretty sure she didn't
speak for Michelle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Scylla</I>'s ports had all been sealed. There was no outside
view, nothing to see inside but bots and bodies and the tangled
silhouette swelling on my helmet HUD. But I could feel the radiation
slicing through our armor as if it were tissue paper. I could feel
the knotted crests and troughs of <I>Rorschach</I>'s magnetic field.
I could feel <I>Rorschach</I> itself, drawing nearer: the charred
canopy of some firestormed alien forest, more landscape than
artefact. I imagined titanic bolts of electricity arcing between its
branches. I imagined getting in the way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
What kind of creatures would choose to live in such a place?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You really think we'll get along,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James' shrug was all but lost under the armor. &quot;Maybe not at
first. We may have gotten off on the wrong foot, we might have to
sort through all kinds of misunderstandings. But we'll figure each
other out eventually.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Evidently she thought that had answered my question.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The shuttle slewed; we bumped against each other like tenpins.
Thirty seconds of micromaneuvers brought us to a solid stop. A
cheery animation played across the HUD in greens and blues: the
shuttle's docking seal, easing through the membrane that served as
our entrance into <I>Rorschach</I>'s inflatable vestibule. Even as a
cartoon it looked vaguely pornographic.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates had been prepacked next to the airlock. She slid back the
inner door. &quot;Everybody duck.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not an easy maneuver, swaddled in life-support and ferroceramic.
Helmets tilted and bumped. The grunts, flattened overhead like great
lethal cockroaches, hummed to life and disengaged from the ceiling.
They scraped past in the narrow headroom, bobbed cryptically to their
mistress, and exited stage left.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates closed the inner hatch. The lock cycled, opened again on an
empty chamber.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Everything nominal, according to the board. The drones waited
patiently in the vestibule. Nothing had jumped out at them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates followed them through.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We had to wait forever for the image. The baud rate was less than a
trickle. Words moved back and forth easily enough—&quot;No
surprises so far,&quot; Bates reported in distorted Jews-harp
vibrato—but any picture was worth a million of them, and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There: through the eyes of the grunt behind we saw the grunt ahead
in motionless, grainy monochrome. It was a postcard from the past:
sight turned to sound, thick clumsy vibrations of methane bumping
against the hull. It took long seconds for each static-ridden image
to accrete on the HUD: grunts descending into the pit; grunts
emerging into <I>Rorschach</I>'s duodenum; a cryptic, hostile
cavescape in systematic increments. Down in the lower left-hand
corner of each image, timestamps and Teslas ran down the clock.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You give up a lot when you don't trust the EM spectrum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Looks good,&quot; Bates reported. &quot;Going in.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In a friendlier universe machines would have cruised the boulevard,
sending perfect images in crystal resolution. Szpindel and the Gang
would be sipping coffee back in the drum, telling the grunts to take
a sample of this or get a close-up of that. In a friendlier
universe, I wouldn't even be here.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates appeared in the next postcard, emerging from the fistula. In
the next her back was to the camera, apparently panning the
perimeter.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In the one after that she was looking right at us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh...okay,&quot; she said. &quot;Come on...down...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not so fast,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;How are you feeling?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Fine. A bit—odd, but...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Odd how?&quot; Radiation sickness announced itself with
nausea, but unless we'd seriously erred in our calculations that
wouldn't happen for another hour or two. Not until well after we'd
all been lethally cooked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mild disorientation,&quot; Bates reported. &quot;It's a bit
spooky in here, but—must be Grey Syndrome. It's tolerable.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at the Gang. The Gang looked at Szpindel. Szpindel
shrugged.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not gonna get any better,&quot; Bates said from afar.
&quot;The clock is... clock is ticking, people. Get down here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We got.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not living, not by a long shot.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Haunted</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Even when the walls didn't move, they did: always at the corner of
the eye, that sense of crawling motion. Always at the back of the
mind the sense of being <I>watched</I>, the dread certainty of malign
and alien observers just out of sight. More than once I turned,
expecting to catch one of those phantoms in the open. All I ever saw
was a half-blind grunt floating down the passageway, or a wide-eyed
and jittery crewmate returning my stare. And the walls of some
glistening black lava tube with a hundred embedded eyes, all snapped
shut just the instant before. Our lights pushed the darkness back
perhaps twenty meters in either direction; beyond, mist and shadows
seethed. And the <I>sounds</I><I>Rorschach</I> creaked around
us like some ancient wooden hull trapped in pack ice. Electricity
hissed like rattlesnakes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You tell yourself it's mostly in your head. You remind yourself it's
well-documented, an inevitable consequence of meat and magnetism
brought too close together. High-energy fields release the ghosts
and the grays from your temporal lobe, dredge up paralyzing dread
from the midbrain to saturate the conscious mind. They fuck with
your motor nerves and make even dormant inlays sing like fine fragile
crystal.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Energy artefacts. That's all they are. You repeat that to yourself,
you repeat it so often it loses any pretense of rationality and
devolves into rote incantation, a spell to ward off evil spirits.
They're not real, these whispering voices just outside your helmet,
those half-seen creatures flickering at the edge of vision. They're
tricks of the mind, the same neurological smoke-and-mirrors that
convinced people throughout the ages that they were being haunted by
ghosts, abducted by aliens, hunted by—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—vampires—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and you wonder whether Sarasti really stayed behind or if he
was here all along, waiting for you...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Another spike,&quot; Bates warned as <I>Tesla</I> and <I>Seiverts</I>
surged on my HUD. &quot;Hang on.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was installing the Faraday bell. Trying to. It should have been
simple enough; I'd already run the main anchor line down from the
vestibule to the flaccid sack floating in the middle of the
passageway. I was—that's right, something about a spring line.
To, to keep the bell centered. The wall glistened in my headlamp
like wet clay. Satanic runes sparkled in my imagination.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I jammed the spring line's pad against the wall. I could have sworn
the substrate <I>flinched</I>. I fired my thrust pistol, retreated
back to the center of the passage.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're here,&quot; James whispered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Something </I>was. I could feel it always behind me, no matter
where I turned. I could feel some great roaring darkness swirling
just out of sight, a ravenous <I>mouth</I> as wide as the tunnel
itself. Any moment now it would lunge forward at impossible speed and
engulf us all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're <I>beautiful</I>...&quot; James said. There was no
fear in her voice at all. She sounded awestruck.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What? Where?&quot; Bates never stopped turning, kept trying
to keep the whole three-sixty in sight at once. The drones under her
command wobbled restlessly to either side, armored parentheses
pointing down the passageway in opposite directions. &quot;What do
you see?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not out <I>there</I>. In <I>here</I>. <I>Everywhere</I>.
Can't you see it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can't see anything,&quot; Szpindel said, his voice shaking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's in the EM fields,&quot; James said. &quot;<I>That's</I>
how they communicate. The whole structure is full of <I>language</I>,
it's—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can't see <I>anything</I>,&quot; Szpindel repeated. His
breath echoed loud and fast over the link. &quot;I'm <I>blind</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Shit.</I>&quot; Bates swung on Szpindel. &quot;How can
that—the radiation—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I d-don't think that's it..&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nine Tesla, and the ghosts were everywhere. I smelled asphalt and
honeysuckle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Keeton!&quot; Bates called. &quot;You with us?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Y-yeah.&quot; Barely. I was back at the bell, my hand on the
ripcord. Trying to ignore whatever kept tapping me on the shoulder.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Leave that! Get him outside!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No!&quot; Szpindel floated helplessly in the passage, his
pistol bouncing against its wrist tether. &quot;No, throw me
something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>It's all in your head. It's all in your—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Throw something! Anything!&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates hesitated. &quot;You said you were bli—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Just do it!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates pulled a spare suit battery off her belt and lobbed it.
Szpindel reached, fumbled. The battery slipped from his grasp and
bounced off the wall.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'll be okay,&quot; he gasped. &quot;Just get me into the
tent.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I yanked the cord. The bell inflated like a great gunmetal
marshmallow.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Everyone inside!&quot; Bates ran her pistol with one hand,
grabbed Szpindel with the other. She handed him off to me and
slapped a sensor pod onto the skin of the tent. I pulled back the
shielded entrance flap as though pulling a scab from a wound. The
single molecule beneath, infinitely long, endlessly folded against
itself, swirled and glistened like a soap bubble.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Get him in. James! Get down here!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I pushed Szpindel through the membrane. It split around him with
airtight intimacy, hugged each tiny crack and contour as he passed
through.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>James</I>! Are you—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Get it off me!</I>&quot; Harsh voice, raw and scared and
scary, as male as female could sound. Cruncher in control. &quot;<I>Get
it off!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked back. Susan James' body tumbled slowly in the tunnel,
grasping its right leg with both hands.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>James!</I>&quot; Bates sailed over to the other woman.
&quot;Keeton! Help out!&quot; She took the Gang by the arm.
&quot;Cruncher? What's the problem?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>That!</I> You <I>blind</I>?&quot; He wasn't just <I>grasping</I>
at the limb, I realized as I joined them. He was <I>tugging</I> at
it. <I>He was trying to pull it off.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something laughed hysterically, right inside my helmet.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Take his arm,&quot; Bates told me, taking his right one, trying
to pry the fingers from their death grip on the Gang's leg.
&quot;Cruncher, <I>let go</I>. <I>Now.</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Get it off me!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's your leg, Cruncher.&quot; We wrestled our way towards the
diving bell.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's <I>not</I> my leg! Just <I>look</I> at it, how could
it—it's <I>dead</I>. It's <I>stuck</I> to me...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Almost there. &quot;Cruncher, <I>listen</I>,&quot; Bates snapped.
&quot;Are you with m—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Get it off!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We stuffed the Gang into the tent. Bates moved aside as I dove in
after them. Amazing, the way she held it together. Somehow she kept
the demons at bay, herded us to shelter like a border collie in a
thunderstorm. She was—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She wasn't following us in. She wasn't even <I>there</I>. I turned
to see her body floating outside the tent, one gloved hand grasping
the edge of the flap; but even under all those layers of Kapton and
Chromel and polycarbonate, even behind the distorted half-reflections
on her faceplate, I could tell that something was missing. All her
surfaces had just <I>disappeared.</I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This couldn't be Amanda Bates. The thing before me had no more
topology than a mannequin.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Amanda?&quot; The Gang gibbered at my back, softly hysteric.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel: &quot;What's happening?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'll stay out here,&quot; Bates said. She had no affect
whatsoever. &quot;I'm dead anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Wha</I>—&quot; Szpindel had lots. &quot;You <I>will</I>
be, if you don't—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You leave me here,&quot; Bates said. &quot;That's an order.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She sealed us in.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't the first time, not for me. I'd had invisible fingers
poking through my brain before, stirring up the muck, ripping open
the scabs. It was far more intense when <I>Rorschach</I> did it to
me, but Chelsea was more—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—precise, I guess you'd say.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Macramé, she called it: glial jumpstarts, cascade effects,
the splice and dice of critical ganglia. While I trafficked in the
reading of Human architecture, Chelsea <I>changed</I> it—finding
the critical nodes and nudging them just so, dropping a pebble into
some trickle at the headwaters of memory and watching the ripples
build to a great rolling cascade deep in the downstream psyche. She
could hotwire happiness in the time it took to fix a sandwich,
reconcile you with your whole childhood in the course of a lunch hour
or three.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Like so many other domains of human invention, this one had learned
to run without her. Human nature was becoming an assembly-line edit,
Humanity itself increasingly relegated from Production to product.
Still. For me, Chelsea's skill set recast a strange old world in an
entirely new light: the cut-and-paste of minds not for the greater
good of some abstract society, but for the simple selfish wants of
the individual.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Let me give you the gift of happiness,&quot; she said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm already pretty happy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'll make you happier. A TAT, on me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tat?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Transient Attitudinal Tweak. I've still got privileges at
Sax.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I've been tweaked plenty. Change one more synapse and I might
turn into someone else.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's ridiculous and you know it. Or every experience you had
would turn you into a different person.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought about that. &quot;Maybe it does.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But she wouldn't let it go, and even the strongest anti-happiness
argument was bound to be an uphill proposition; so one afternoon
Chelsea fished around in her cupboards and dredged up a hair-net
studded with greasy gray washers. The net was a superconducting
spiderweb, fine as mist, that mapped the fields of merest thought.
The washers were ceramic magnets that bathed the brain in fields of
their own. Chelsea's inlays linked to a base station that played
with the interference patterns between the two.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They used to need a machine the size of a bathroom just to
house the magnets.&quot; She laid me back on the couch and stretched
the mesh across my skull. &quot;That's the only outright miracle you
get with a portable setup like this. We can find hot spots, and we
can even zap 'em if they need zapping, but TMS effects fade after a
while. We'll have to go to a clinic for anything permanent.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we're fishing for what, exactly? Repressed memories?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No such thing.&quot; She grinned in toothy reassurance.
&quot;There are only memories we choose to ignore, or kinda think
<I>around</I>, if you know what I mean.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought this was the gift of happiness. Why—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She laid a fingertip across my lips. &quot;Believe it or not,
Cyggers, people sometimes choose to ignore even <I>good</I> memories.
Like, say, if they enjoyed something they didn't think they should.
Or—&quot; she kissed my forehead— &quot;if they don't
think they <I>deserve</I> to be happy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we're going for—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Potluck. You can never tell 'til you get a bite. Close your
eyes.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A soft hum started up somewhere between my ears. Chelsea's voice led
me on through the darkness. &quot;Now keep in mind, memories aren't
historical archives. They're—improvisations, really. A lot
of the stuff you associate with a particular event might be factually
wrong, no matter how clearly you remember it. The brain has a funny
habit of building composites. Inserting details after the fact. But
that's not to say your memories aren't <I>true</I>, okay? They're
an honest reflection of how you saw the world, and every one of them
went into shaping how you <I>see</I> it. But they're not
photographs. More like impressionist paintings. Okay?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Okay.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah,&quot; she said. &quot;There's something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Functional cluster. Getting a lot of low-level use but not
enough to intrude into conscious awareness. Let's just see what
happens when we—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And I was ten years old, and I was home early and I'd just let myself
into the kitchen and the smell of burned butter and garlic hung in
the air. Dad and Helen were fighting in the next room. The flip-top
on our kitchen-catcher had been left up, which was sometimes enough
to get Helen going all by itself. But they were fighting about
something else; Helen <I>only wanted what was best for all of us</I>
but Dad said <I>there were limits</I> and <I>this was not the way to
go about it</I>. And Helen said <I>you don't know what it's like you
hardly ever even </I>see<I> him</I> and then I knew they were
fighting about me. Which in and of itself was nothing unusual.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
What really scared me was that for the first time ever, Dad was
fighting <I>back</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You do not <I>force</I> something like that onto someone.
Especially without their knowledge.&quot; My father never
shouted—his voice was as low and level as ever—but it was
colder than I'd ever heard, and hard as iron.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's just <I>garbage</I>,&quot; Helen said. &quot;Parents
<I>always</I> make decisions for their children, in their best
interests, especially when it comes to medical iss—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>This is not a medical issue</I>.&quot; This time my father's
voice <I>did</I> rise. &quot;It's—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not a medical issue! That's a new height of denial even for
you! They cut out half his <I>brain</I> in case you missed it! Do
you think he can recover from that without help? Is that more of
your father's <I>tough love</I> shining through? Why not just deny
him food and water while you're at it!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If mu-ops were called for they'd have been prescribed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt my face scrunching at the unfamiliar word. Something small
and white beckoned from the open garbage pail.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jim, be <I>reasonable.</I> He's so <I>distant</I>, he barely
even <I>talks </I>to me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They said it would take time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But two years! There's nothing wrong with helping nature along
a little, we're not even talking black market. It's
over-the-counter, for God's sake!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's not the point.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
An empty pill bottle. That's what one of them had thrown out, before
forgetting to close the lid. I salvaged it from the kitchen discards
and sounded out the label in my head.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe the <I>point</I> should be that someone who's barely home
three months of the year has got his bloody nerve passing judgment on
<I>my </I>parenting skills. If you want a say in how he's raised,
then you can damn well pay some dues first. Until then, just fuck
right off.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You will not put that shit into my son <I>ever again</I>,&quot;
my father said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-inside: avoid; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif"><FONT SIZE=4 STYLE="font-size: 15pt">Bondfast™
Formula IV</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-inside: avoid; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&#61549;-Opioid Receptor Promoters / Maternal Response Stimulant</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:center; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-inside: avoid; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif"><FONT SIZE=3>&quot;Strengthening
ties between Mother and Child since 2042&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah? And how are you going to stop me, you little geek? You
can't even make the time to find out what's going on in your own
family; you think you can control me all the way from fucking orbit?
You think—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Suddenly, nothing came from the living room but soft choking sounds.
I peeked around the corner.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My father had Helen by the throat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think,&quot; he growled, &quot;that I can stop you from doing
anything to Siri ever again, if I have to. And I think you know
that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And then she saw me. And then he did. And my father took his hand
from around my mother's neck, and his face was utterly unreadable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But there was no mistaking the triumph on hers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was up off the couch, the skullcap clenched in one hand. Chelsea
stood wide-eyed before me, the butterfly still as death on her
cheekbone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She took my hand. &quot;Oh, God. I'm so sorry.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You—you saw that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, of course not. It can't read minds. But that obviously—
wasn't a happy memory.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It wasn't all that bad.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt sharp, disembodied pain from somewhere nearby, like an ink
spot on a white tablecloth. After a moment I fixed it: teeth in my
lip.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She ran her hand up my arm. &quot;It really stressed you out. Your
vitals were—are you okay?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, of course. No big deal.&quot; Tasting salt. &quot;I am
curious about something, though.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ask me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why would you do this to me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Because we can make it go <I>away</I>, Cygnus. That's the
whole point. Whatever that was, whatever you didn't like about it,
we know where it is now. We can go back in and damp it out just like
<I>that</I>. And then we've got <I>days</I> to get it removed
permanently, if that's what you want. Just put the cap back on and—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She put her arms around me, drew me close. She smelled like sand,
and sweat. I loved the way she smelled. For a while, I could feel a
little bit safe. For a while I could feel like the bottom wasn't
going to drop out at any moment. Somehow, when I was with Chelsea, I
<I>mattered</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I wanted her to hold me forever.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think so,&quot; I said<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No?&quot; She blinked, looked up at me. &quot;Why ever <I>not</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged. &quot;You know what they say about people who don't
remember the past.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Predators
run for their dinner. Prey run for their lives.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Old
Ecologist's Proverb</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were blind and helpless, jammed into a fragile bubble behind enemy
lines. But finally the whisperers were silent. The monsters had
stayed beyond the covers.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And Amanda Bates was out there with them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What the fuck,&quot; Szpindel breathed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The eyes behind his faceplate were active and searching. &quot;You
can see?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded. &quot;What happened to Bates? Her suit breach?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think so.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then why'd she say she was dead? What—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She meant it <I>literally</I>,&quot; I told him. &quot;Not
<I>I'm as good as dead</I> or <I>I'm going to die</I>. She meant
dead <I>now</I>. Like she was a talking corpse.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do—&quot; <I>you know?</I> Stupid question. His
face ticced and trembled in the helmet. &quot;That's crazy, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Define <I>crazy</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang floated quietly, cheek-to-jowl behind Szpindel in the
cramped enclosure. Cruncher had stopped obsessing about the leg as
soon as we'd sealed up. Or maybe he'd simply been overridden; I
thought I saw facets of Susan in the twitching of those thick gloved
fingers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel's breath echoed second-hand over the link. &quot;If Bates
is dead, then so are we.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe not. We wait out the spike, we get out of here.
Besides,&quot; I added, &quot;she wasn't dead. She only said she
was.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Fuck,&quot; Szpindel reached out and pressed his gloved palm
against the skin of the tent. He felt back and forth along the
fabric. &quot;Someone <I>did</I> put out a transducer—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Eight o'clock,&quot; I said. &quot;About a meter.&quot;
Szpindel's hand came to rest across the wall from the pod. My HUD
flooded with second-hand numbers, vibrated down his arm and relayed
to our suits.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Still five Tesla out there. Falling, though. The tent expanded
around us as if breathing, shrank back in the next second as some
transient low-pressure front moved past.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;When did your sight come back?&quot; I wondered.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Soon as we came inside.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sooner. You saw the battery.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Fumbled it.&quot; He grunted. &quot;Not that I'm much less of
a spaz even when I'm <I>not</I> blind, eh? Bates! You out there?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You reached for it. You almost caught it. That wasn't blind
chance.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not blind chance. Blind<I>sight</I>. Amanda? Respond,
please.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Blindsight?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nothing wrong with the receptors,&quot; he said distractedly.
&quot;Brain processes the image but it can't access it. Brain stem
takes over.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Your brainstem can see but you <I>can't</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Something like that. Shut up and let me—Amanda, can you
hear me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;...No...&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not from anyone in the tent, that voice. It had shivered down
Szpindel's arm, barely audible, with the rest of the data. From
<I>outside</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Major Mandy!&quot; Szpindel exclaimed. &quot;You're alive!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;....no...&quot; A whisper like white noise.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well you're talking to us, so you sure as shit ain't <I>dead</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel and I exchanged looks. &quot;What's the problem, Major?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Silence. The Gang bumped gently against the wall behind us, all
facets opaque.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Major Bates? Can you hear me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot; It was a dead voice— sedated, trapped in a
fishbowl, transmitted through limbs and lead at a three-digit baud
rate. But it was definitely Bates' voice.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Major, you've got to get in here,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;Can
you come inside?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;...No...&quot;.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you injured? Are you pinned by something?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;..N—no.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe not her voice, after all. Maybe just her vocal cords.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Look. Amanda, it's dangerous. It's too damn hot out there, do
you understand? You—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm not out here,&quot; said the voice.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Where are you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;...nowhere.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at Szpindel. Szpindel looked at me. Neither of us spoke.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James did. At long last, and softly: &quot;And <I>what</I> are you,
Amanda?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you <I>Rorschach</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Here in the belly of the beast, it was so easy to believe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;N...nothing.&quot; The voice was flat and mechanical. &quot;I'm
nothing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're saying you don't exist?&quot; Szpindel said slowly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The tent breathed around us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then how can you speak?&quot; Susan asked the voice. &quot;If
you don't exist, what are we talking to?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Something...else.&quot; A sigh. A breath of static. &quot;Not
me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shit,&quot; Szpindel muttered. His surfaces brightened with
resolve and sudden insight. He pulled his hand from the wall; my HUD
thinned instantly. &quot;Her brain's frying. We gotta get her
inside.&quot; He reached for the release.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I put out my own hand. &quot;The spike—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Crested already, commissar. We're past the worst of it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you saying it's safe?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's lethal. It's <I>always</I> lethal, and she's <I>out there</I>
in it, and she could do some serious damage to herself in her pres—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something bumped the tent from the outside. Something grabbed the
outer catch and <I>pulled</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Our shelter opened like an eye. Amanda Bates looked in at us through
the exposed membrane. &quot;I'm reading three point eight,&quot; she
said. &quot;That's tolerable, right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody moved.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Come <I>on</I>, people. Break's over.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ama—&quot; Szpindel stared. &quot;Are you okay?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;In here? Not likely. But we've got a job to do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you—exist?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What kind of stupid question is that? Szpindel, how's this
field strength? Can we work in it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Uh...&quot; He swallowed audibly. &quot;Maybe we should abort,
Major. That spike was—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;According to my readings, the spike is pretty much over. And
we've got less than two hours to finish setting up, run our ground
truths, and get out of here. Can we do that without hallucinating?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think we'll shake the heebie-jeebies,&quot; Szpindel
admitted. &quot;But we shouldn't have to worry about —extreme
effects— until another spike hits.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Good.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Which could be any time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We weren't hallucinating,&quot; James said quietly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We can discuss it later,&quot; Bates said. &quot;Now—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There was a pattern there,&quot; James insisted. &quot;In the
fields. In my head. <I>Rorschach</I> was talking. Maybe not to us,
but it was talking.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Good.&quot; Bates pushed herself back to let us pass. &quot;Maybe
now we can finally learn to talk back.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe we can learn to <I>listen</I>,&quot; James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We fled like frightened children with brave faces. We left a base
camp behind: Jack, still miraculously functional in its vestibule; a
tunnel into the haunted mansion; forlorn magnetometers left to die in
the faint hope they might not. Crude pyronometers and thermographs,
antique radiation-proof devices that measured the world through the
flex and stretch of metal tabs and etched their findings on rolls of
plastic. Glow-globes and diving bells and guide ropes strung one to
another. We left it all behind, and promised to return in thirty-six
hours if we lived so long.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Inside each of us, infinitesimal lacerations were turning our cells
to mush. Plasma membranes sprang countless leaks. Overwhelmed
repair enzymes clung desperately to shredded genes and barely delayed
the inevitable. Anxious to avoid the rush, patches of my intestinal
lining began flaking away before the rest of the body had a chance to
die.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time we docked with <I>Theseus</I> both Michelle and I were
feeling nauseous. (The rest of the Gang, oddly, was not; I had no
idea how that was possible.) The others would be presenting the same
symptoms within minutes. Without intervention we would all be
vomiting our guts out for the following two days. Then the body
would pretend to recover; for perhaps a week we would feel no pain
and have no future. We would walk and talk and move like any living
thing, and perhaps convince ourselves that we were immortal after
all.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Then we would collapse into ourselves, rotted from the inside out.
We would bleed from our eyes and mouths and assholes, and if any God
was merciful we would die before splitting open like rotten fruit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But of course <I>Theseus</I>, our redeemer, would save us from such a
fate. We filed from the shuttle into a great balloon that Sarasti
had erected to capture our personal effects; we shed our contaminated
space suits and clothing and emerged naked into the spine. We passed
single-file through the drum, the Flying Dead in formation. Jukka
Sarasti—discreetly distant on the turning floor—leapt up
in our wake and disappeared aft, to feed our radioactive cast-offs
into the decompiler.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Into the crypt. Our coffins lay open across the rear bulkhead. We
sank gratefully and wordlessly into their embrace. Bates coughed
blood as the lids came down.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My bones hummed as the Captain began to shut me off. I went to sleep
a dead man. I had only theory and the assurances of fellow machinery
that I would ever be born again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Keeton, come forth</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I woke up ravenous. Faint voices drifted forward from the drum. I
floated in my pod for a few moments, eyes closed, savoring absences:
no pain, no nausea. No terrifying subliminal sense of one's own body
sloughing incrementally to mush. Weakness, and hunger; otherwise I
felt fine.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I opened my eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something like an arm. Grey and glistening, far too— too
<I>attenuate</I> to be human. No hand at its tip. Too many joints,
a limb broken in a dozen places. It extended from a body barely
visible over the lip of the pod, a suggestion of dark bulk and other
limbs in disjoint motion. It hovered motionless before me, as if
startled in the midst of some shameful act.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time I had breath enough to cry out, it had whipped back out
of sight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I erupted from the pod, eyes everywhere. Now they saw nothing: an
empty crypt, a naked note-taker. The mirrored bulkhead reflected
vacant pods to either side. I called up ConSensus: all systems
nominal.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>It didn't reflect</I>, I remembered. <I>The mirror didn't show
it</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I headed aft, heart still pounding. The drum opened around me,
Szpindel and the Gang conversing in low tones aft. Szpindel glanced
up and waved a trembling hand in greeting.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You need to check me out,&quot; I called. My voice wasn't
nearly so steady as I'd hoped.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Admitting you have a problem is the first step,&quot; Szpindel
called back. &quot;Just don't expect miracles.&quot; He turned back
to the Gang; James on top, they sat in a diagnostic couch staring at
some test pattern shimmering on the rear bulkhead.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I grabbed the tip of a stairway and pulled myself down. Coriolis
pushed me sideways like a flag in the breeze. &quot;I'm either
hallucinating or there's something on board.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're hallucinating.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm <I>serious</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So am I. Take a number. Wait your turn.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He <I>was</I> serious. Once I forced myself to calm down and read
the signs, I could see he wasn't even surprised.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Guess you're pretty hungry after all that exhausting lying
around, eh?&quot; Szpindel waved at the galley. &quot;Eat
something. Be with you in a few minutes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I forced myself to work up my latest synopsis while I ate, but that
only took half a mind; the other still shivered in residual thrall to
fight-flight. I tried to distract it by tapping the BioMed feed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was <I>real</I>,&quot; James was saying. &quot;We all saw
it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>No. Couldn't have been</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel cleared his throat. &quot;Try this one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The feed showed what she saw: a small black triangle on a white
background. In the next instant it shattered into a dozen identical
copies, and a dozen dozen. The proliferating brood rotated around
the center screen, geometric primitives ballroom-dancing in precise
formation, each sprouting smaller triangles from its tips,
fractalizing, rotating, <I>evolving</I> into an infinite, intricate
tilework...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A sketchpad, I realized. An interactive eyewitness reconstruction,
without the verbiage. Susan's own pattern-matching wetware reacted
to what she saw— <I>no, there were more of them; no, the
orientation's wrong; yes, that's it, but bigger</I>— and
Szpindel's machine picked those reactions right out of her head and
amended the display in realtime. It was a big step up from that
half-assed workaround called <I>language.</I> The easily-impressed
might have even called it mind-reading.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't, though. It was all just feedback and correlation. It
doesn't take a telepath to turn one set of patterns into another.
Fortunately.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's it! That's <I>it</I>!&quot; Susan cried.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The triangles had iterated out of existence. Now the display was
full of interlocking asymmetrical pentagrams, a spiderweb of fish
scales.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't tell us that's <I>random noise</I>,&quot; she said
triumphantly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; Szpindel said, &quot;It's a Klüver constant.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's a hallucination, Suze.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of <I>course</I>. But something <I>planted</I> it in our head,
right? And—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was in your head all along. It was in your head the day you
were born.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's an artefact of deep brain structure. Even congenitally
blind people see them sometimes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;None of us have seen them before. <I>Ever</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I believe you. But there's no <I>information</I> there, eh?
That wasn't <I>Rorschach</I> talking, it was just—interference.
Like everything else.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But it was so vivid! Not that flickering corner-of-your-eye
stuff we saw everywhere. This was <I>solid</I>. It was realer than
real.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's how you can tell it wasn't. Since you don't actually
<I>see</I> it, there's no messy eyeball optics to limit resolution.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh,&quot; James said, and then, softly: &quot;Shit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. Sorry.&quot; And then, &quot;Any time you're ready.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked up; Szpindel was waving me over. James rose from her chair,
but it was Michelle who gave him a quick disconsolate squeeze and
Sascha who grumbled past me on her way to their tent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time I reached him Szpindel had unfolded the couch into a
half-cot. &quot;Lie down.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I did. &quot;I wasn't talking about back in <I>Rorschach</I>, you
know. I meant <I>here</I>. I saw something right now. When I woke
up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Raise your left hand,&quot; he said. Then: &quot;<I>Just</I>
your left, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I lowered my right, winced at the pinprick. &quot;That's a bit
primitive.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He eyed the blood-filled cuvette between his thumb and forefinger: a
shivering ruby teardrop the size of a fingernail. &quot;Wet sample's
still best for some things.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Aren't the pods supposed to do everything?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel nodded. &quot;Call it a quality-control test. Keep the
ship on its toes.&quot; He dropped the sample onto the nearest
countertop. The teardrop flattened and burst; the surface drank my
blood as if parched. Szpindel smacked his lips. &quot;Elevated
cholinesterase inhibitors in the ret. Yum.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For all I knew, my blood results actually <I>did</I> taste good to
the man. Szpindel didn't just read results; he <I>felt</I> them,
smelled and saw and <I>experienced</I> each datum like drops of
citrus on the tongue. The whole BioMed subdrum was but a part of the
Szpindel prosthesis: an extended body with dozens of different
sensory modes, forced to talk to a brain that knew only five.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No wonder he'd bonded with Michelle. He was almost synesthesiac
himself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You spent a bit longer in there than the rest of us,&quot; he
remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's significant?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A jerking shrug. &quot;Maybe your organs got a bit more cooked than
ours. Maybe you just got a delicate constitution. Your pod would've
caught anything—imminent, so I figure—ah.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Some cells along your brainpan going into overdrive. More in
your bladder and kidney.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tumors?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What you expect? <I>Rorschach</I>'s no rejuve spa.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But the pod—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel grimaced; his idea of a reassuring smile. &quot;Repairs
ninety-nine point nine percent of the damage, sure. By the time you
get to the last zero-point-one, you're into diminishing returns.
These're <I>small</I>, commissar. Chances are your own body'll take
care of 'em. If not, we know where they live.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The ones in my brain. Could they be causing—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not a chance.&quot; He chewed on his lower lip for a moment.
&quot;Course, cancer's not all that thing did to us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What I saw. Up in the crypt. It had these multijointed arms
from a central mass. Big as a person, maybe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel nodded. &quot;Get used to it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The others are seeing these things?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I doubt it. Everyone has a different take, like—&quot;
his twitching face conveyed <I>Dare I say it?</I> &quot;—<I>Rorschach</I>
blots.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I was expecting hallucinations in the field,&quot; I admitted,
&quot;but up here?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;TMS effects—&quot; Szpindel snapped his fingers—
&quot;they're <I>sticky</I>, eh? Neurons get kicked into one state,
take a while to come unstuck. You never got a TAT? Well-adjusted
boy like you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Once or twice,&quot; I said. &quot;Maybe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Same principle.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So I'm going to keep seeing this stuff.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Party line is they fade over time. Week or two you're back to
normal. But out here, with <I>that</I> thing...&quot; He shrugged.
&quot;Too many variables. Not the least of which is, I assume we'll
keep going <I>back</I> until Sarasti says otherwise.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But they're basically magnetic effects.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably. Although I'm not betting on anything where <I>that</I>
fucker's concerned.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Could something else be causing them?&quot; I asked.
&quot;Something on <I>this</I> ship?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like what?'</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know. Leakage in <I>Theseus</I>' magnetic shielding,
maybe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not normally. Course, we've all got little implanted networks
in our heads, eh? And you've got a whole hemisphere of prosthetics
up there, who knows what kind of <I>side</I>-<I>effects</I> those
might let you in for. Why? <I>Rorschach</I> not a good enough
reason for you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I saw them before,</I> I might have said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And then Szpindel would say <I>Oh, when? Where?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And maybe I'd reply <I>When I was spying on your private life</I>,
and any chance of <I>noninvasive observation </I>would be flushed
down to the atoms.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's probably nothing. I've just been—jumpy lately.
Thought I saw something weird in the spinal bundle, back before we
landed on <I>Rorschach</I>. Just for a second, you know, and it
disappeared as soon as I focused on it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Multijointed arms with a central mass?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;God no. Just a flicker, really. If it was anything at all, it
was probably just Amanda's rubber ball floating around up there.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably.&quot; Szpindel seemed almost amused. &quot;Couldn't
hurt to check for leakage in the shielding, though. Just in case.
Not like we need something <I>else</I> making us see things, eh?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shook my head at remembered nightmares. &quot;How are the others?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Gang's fine, if a bit disappointed. Haven't seen the Major.&quot;
He shrugged. &quot;Maybe she's avoiding me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It hit her pretty hard.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No worse than the rest of us, really. She might not even
remember it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How—how could she possibly believe she didn't even
<I>exist</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel shook his head. &quot;Didn't believe it. <I>Knew</I> it.
For a fact.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But how—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Charge gauge on your car, right? Sometimes the contacts
corrode. Readout freezes on empty, so you think it's empty. What
else you supposed to think? Not like you can go in and count the
electrons.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're saying the brain's got some kind of <I>existence gauge</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Brain's got all <I>kinds</I> of gauges. You can <I>know</I>
you're blind even when you're not; you can <I>know</I> you can see,
even when you're blind. And yeah, you can <I>know</I> you don't
exist even when you do. It's a long list, commissar. Cotard's,
Anton's, Damascus Disease. Just for starters.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He hadn't said <I>blindsight</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What was it like?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like?&quot; Although he knew exactly what I meant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did your arm— move by itself? When it reached for that
battery?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh. Nah. You're still in control, you just—you get a
feeling, is all. A <I>sense</I> of where to reach. One part of the
brain playing charades with another, eh?&quot; He gestured at the
couch. &quot;Get off. Seen enough of your ugly guts for now. And
send up Bates if you can find where she's hiding. Probably back at
Fab building a bigger army.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The misgivings glinted off him like sunlight. &quot;You have a
problem with her,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He started to deny it, then remembered who he was talking to. &quot;Not
personally. Just—human node running mechanical infantry.
Electronic reflexes slaved to meat reflexes. You tell me where the
weak spot is.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Down in <I>Rorschach,</I> I'd have to say <I>all</I> the links
are pretty weak.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not talking about <I>Rorschach</I>,&quot; Szpindel said. &quot;We
go there. What stops them from coming here?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe they haven't arrived yet,&quot; he admitted. &quot;But
when they do, I'm betting we'll be going up against something bigger
than anaerobic microbes.&quot; When I didn't answer he continued,
his voice lowered. &quot;And anyway, Mission Control didn't know
shit about <I>Rorschach</I>. They thought they were sending us some
place where drones could do all the heavy lifting. But they just
hate not being in command, eh? Can't admit the grunts're smarter
than the generals. So our defenses get compromised for political
appearances—not like <I>that's</I> any kinda news—and I'm
no jarhead but it strikes me as real bad strategy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I remembered Amanda Bates, midwifing the birth of her troops. <I>I'm
more of a safety precaution....</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Amanda—&quot; I began.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like Mandy fine. Nice mammal. But if we're cruising into a
combat situation I don't want my ass covered by some network held
back by its weakest link.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If you're going to be surrounded by a swarm of killer robots,
maybe—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, people keep saying that. Can't trust the machines.
Luddites love to go on about computer malfunctions, and how many
accidental wars we might have prevented because a human had the final
say. But funny thing, commissar; nobody talks about how many
intentional wars got <I>started</I> for the same reason. You're
still writing those postcards to posterity?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded, and didn't wince inwardly. It was just Szpindel.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, feel free to stick this conversation in your next one.
For all the good it'll do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you are a prisoner of war.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You've got to admit you saw it coming. You've been crashing tech and
seeding biosols for a solid eighteen months; that's a good run by
anyone's standards. Realist saboteurs do not, as a rule, enjoy long
careers. Everyone gets caught eventually.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't always thus. There was a day you might have even hoped for
a peaceful retirement. But then they brought the vampires back from
the Pleistocene and Great Grieving Ganga did <I>that</I> ever turn
the balance of power upside down. Those fuckers are always ten steps
ahead. It only makes sense; after all, hunting people is what
bloodsuckers evolved to <I>do</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There's this line from an early pop-dyn textbook, really old, maybe
even TwenCen. It's something of a mantra—maybe <I>prayer</I>
would be a better word—among those in your profession.
<I>Predators run for their dinner</I>, it goes. <I>Prey run for
their lives.</I> The moral is supposed to be that on average, the
hunted escape the hunters because they're more motivated.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe that was true when it all just came down to who ran faster.
Doesn't seem to hold when the strategy involves tactical foresight
and double-reverse mind fucks, though. The vampires win every time.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And now you're caught, and while it may have been vampires that set
the trap, it was regular turncoat baseline humans who pulled the
trigger. For six hours now you've been geckoed to the wall of some
unnamed unlisted underground detention facility, watching as some of
those selfsame <I>humans</I> played games with your boyfriend and
co-conspirator. These are not your average games. They involve
pliers, and glowing wires, and body parts that were not designed to
detach. You wish, by now, that your lover were dead, like the two
others in your cell whose parts are scattered about the room. But
they're not letting that happen. They're having too much fun.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That's what it all comes down to. This is not an interrogation;
there are less invasive ways to get more reliable answers. These are
simply a few more sadistic thugs with Authority, killing time and
other things, and you can only cry and squeeze your eyes tight and
whimper like an animal even though they haven't laid a hand on you
yet. You can only wish they hadn't saved you for last, because you
know what that means.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But suddenly your tormentors stop in mid-game and cock their heads as
if listening to some collective inner voice. Presumably it tells
them to take you off the wall, bring you into the next room, and sit
you down at one of two gel-padded chairs on opposite sides of a smart
desk, because this is what they do—far more gently than you'd
expect—before retiring. You can also assume that whoever has
given these instructions is both powerful and displeased, because all
the arrogant sadistic cockiness has drained from their faces in the
space of a heartbeat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You sit and wait. The table glows with soft, cryptic symbols that
would be of no earthly interest to you even if you could understand
them, even if they contained the very secret of the vampires
themselves. Some small part of you wonders if this latest
development might be cause for hope; the rest of you doesn't dare
believe it. You hate yourself for caring about your own survival
when chunks of your friends and allies are still warm on the other
side of the wall.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A stocky Amerind woman appears in the room with you, clad in
nondescript military weave. Her hair is buzzed short, her throat
veined with the faint mesh of a sub-q antennae. Your brain stem sees
that she is ten meters tall, even though some impertinent gelatinous
overlay insists that she is of only average height.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The name tag on her left breast says <I>Bates</I>. You see no sign
of rank.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Bates </I>extracts a weapon from its sheath on her thigh. You
flinch, but she does not point it at you. She sets it on the desk,
easily within your reach, and sits across from you.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A microwave pistol. Fully charged, unlocked. On its lowest setting
it causes sunburn and nausea. On its highest it flash-boils brains
in the skull. At any setting between, it inflicts pain and injury in
increments as fine as your imagination.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Your imagination has been retooled for great sensitivity along such
scales. You stare numbly at the gun, trying to figure the trick.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Two of your friends are dead,&quot; Bates says, as though you
haven't just watched them die. &quot;Irrecoverably so.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Irrecoverably dead. Good one.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We could reconstitute the bodies, but the brain damage...&quot;
Bates clears her throat as if uncomfortable, as if embarrassed. It's
a surprisingly human gesture for a monster. &quot;We're trying to
save the other one. No promises.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We need information,&quot; she says, cutting to the chase.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of course. What came before was psychology, softening-up. Bates is
the good cop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I've got nothing to tell you,&quot; you manage. It's ten
percent defiance, ninety percent deduction: they wouldn't have been
able to catch you in the first place unless they already knew
everything.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then we need an arrangement,&quot; Bates says. &quot;We need
to come to some kind of accommodation.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She has to be kidding.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Your incredulity must be showing. Bates addresses it: &quot;I'm not
completely unsympathetic. My gut doesn't much like the idea of
swapping reality for simulation, and it doesn't buy that
what-is-truth spin the Body Economic sells to get around it. Maybe
there's reason to be scared. Not my problem, not my job, just my
opinion and it could be wrong. But if we kill each other in the
meantime, we don't find out either way. It's unproductive.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You see the dismembered bodies of your friends. You see pieces on
the floor, still a little bit alive, and this cunt has the nerve to
talk about <I>productivity</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We didn't start it,&quot; you say.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know and I don't care. Like I said, it's not my job.&quot;
Bates jerks a thumb over her shoulder at a door in the wall behind
her, the door she must have entered through. &quot;In there,&quot;
she says, &quot;are the ones who killed your friends. They've been
disarmed. When you go through that door the room will go offline and
remain unmonitored for a period of sixty seconds. Nobody besides
yourself will ever hold you accountable for whatever happens in there
during that time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It's a trick. It has to be.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you have to lose?&quot; Bates wonders. &quot;We can
already do anything we want to you. It's not like we need you to
give us an excuse.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Hesitantly, you take the gun. Bates doesn't stop you.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She's right, you realize. You have absolutely nothing to lose. You
stand and, suddenly fearless, point the weapon at her face. &quot;Why
go in there? I can kill you right <I>here</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shrugs. &quot;You could try. Waste of an opportunity, if you
ask me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So I go in there, and I come out in sixty seconds, and then
what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then we talk.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We just—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Think of it as a gesture of good faith,&quot; she says.
&quot;Restitution, even.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The door opens at your approach, closes in your wake. And there they
are, all four of them, spread up across the wall like a chorus line
of Christs on crosses. There's no gleam in those eyes <I>now</I>.
There's only a bright animal terror and the reflection of turned
tables. Two of the Christs stain their pants when you look them in
the eye.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
What's left? Maybe fifty seconds?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It's not a lot. You could have done so much more with just a little
extra time. But it's enough, and you don't want to impose on the
good graces of this Bates woman.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because she may at last be someone you can deal with.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Under other circumstances, Lieutenant Amanda Bates would have been
court-martialed and executed within the month. No matter that the
four who'd died had been guilty of multiple counts of rape, torture,
and homicide; that's just what people <I>did</I> in wartime. It's
what they'd always done. There was nothing <I>polite</I> about war,
no honorable code beyond the chain of command and the circling of
wagons. Deal with indiscretions if you must; punish the guilty if
you have to, for appearance if nothing else. But for God's sake
close the doors first. Never give your enemy the satisfaction of
seeing discord in the ranks, show them nothing but unity and
flinty-eyed resolve. There may be murderers and rapists in our
midst, but by God they're <I>our</I> murderers and rapists.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You certainly don't give right of revenge to some terrorist twat with
over a hundred friendly scalps on her belt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Still, it was hard to argue with results: a negotiated ceasefire
with the third-largest Realist franchise in the hemisphere. An
immediate forty-six percent decline in terrorist activities
throughout the affected territories. The unconditional cancellation
of several in-progress campaigns which could have seriously
compromised three major catacombs and taken out the Duluth Staging
Grounds entirely. All because Lieutenant Amanda Bates, feeling her
way through her first field command, had gambled on <I>empathy</I> as
a military strategy.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was collaborating with the enemy, it was treason, it was betrayal
of the rank and file. Diplomats and politicians were supposed to do
those things, not soldiers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Still. Results.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was all there in the record: initiative, creativity, a willingness
to succeed by whatever means necessary and at whatever cost. Perhaps
those inclinations needed to be punished, perhaps only tempered. The
debate might have gone on forever if the story hadn't leaked—but
it had, and suddenly the generals had a hero on their hands.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometime during her court-martial, Bates's death sentence turned into
a rehabilitation; the only question was whether it would take place
in the stockade or Officer's College. As it turned out, Leavenworth
had both; it took her to its bosom and squeezed hard enough to
virtually guarantee promotion, if it didn't kill her first. Three
years later Major Bates was bound for the stars, where she was heard
to say</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We're breaking and entering, Siri...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel was not the first to register doubts. Others had wondered
whether her assignment owed as much to superior qualifications as it
did to the resolution of inconvenient PR. I, of course, had no
opinion one way or the other; but I could see how she might strike
some as a double-edged sword.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
When the fate of the world hangs in the balance, you want to keep an
eye on anyone whose career-defining moment involves consorting with
the enemy.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;If
you can see it, chances are it doesn't exist.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Kate
Keogh, <I>Grounds for Suicide</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Five times we did it. Over five consecutive orbits we threw
ourselves between the monster's jaws, let it chew at us with a
trillion microscopic teeth until <I>Theseus</I> reeled us in and
stitched us back together. We crept through <I>Rorschach</I>'s belly
in fits and starts, focusing as best we could on the tasks at hand,
trying to ignore the ghosts that tickled our midbrains. Sometimes
the walls flexed subtly around us. Sometimes we only thought they
did. Sometimes we took refuge in our diving bell while waves of
charge and magnetism spiraled languidly past, like boluses of
ectoplasm coursing down the intestine of some poltergeist god.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometimes we got caught in the open. The Gang would squabble
amongst itself, uncertain which persona was which. Once I fell into
a kind of waking paralysis while alien hands dragged me away down the
hall; fortunately other hands brought me home, and voices that
claimed to be real told me I'd made the whole thing up. Twice Amanda
Bates found God, <I>saw</I> the fucker right there in front of her,
knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that the creator not only existed
but <I>spoke</I> to her, and her alone. Both times she lost her
faith once we got her into the bell, but it was touch and go for a
while; her warrior drones, drunk on power but still under
line-of-sight control, staggered from their perimeters and pointed
their weapons along bearings too close for comfort.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunts died fast. Some barely lasted a single foray; a few died
in minutes. The longest-lived were the slowest on the draw,
half-blind, thick-witted, every command and response bottlenecked by
raw high-frequency sound buzzing across their shielded eardrums.
Sometimes we backed them up with others that spoke optically: faster
but nervous, and even more vulnerable. Together they guarded against
an opposition that had not yet shown its face.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It hardly had to. Our troops fell even in the absence of enemy fire.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We worked through it all, through fits and hallucinations and
occasional convulsions. We tried to watch each others' backs while
magnetic tendrils tugged our inner ears and made us seasick.
Sometimes we vomited into our helmets; then we'd just hang on,
white-faced, sucking sour air through clenched teeth while the
recyclers filtered chunks and blobs from our headspace. And we'd
give silent thanks for the small mercy of nonstick, static-repellent
faceplates.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It rapidly became obvious that my presence served as more than cannon
fodder. It didn't matter that I lacked the Gang's linguistic skills
or Szpindel's expertise in biology; I was another set of hands, in a
place where anyone could be laid out at a moment's notice. The more
people Sarasti kept in the field, the greater the odds that at least
one of them would be halfway functional at any given moment. Even
so, we were in barely any condition to accomplish anything. Every
incursion was an exercise in reckless endangerment.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We did it anyway. It was that or go home.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The work proceeded in infinitesimal increments, hamstrung on every
front. The Gang wasn't finding any evidence of signage or speech to
decipher, but the gross mechanics of this thing were easy enough to
observe. Sometimes <I>Rorschach</I> partitioned itself, extruded
ridges around its passageways like the cartilaginous hoops encircling
a human trachea. Over hours some of them might develop into
contracting irises, into complete septa, lazy as warm candle wax. We
seemed to be witnessing the growth of the structure in discrete
segments. <I>Rorschach</I> grew mainly from the tips of its thorns;
we'd made our incursion hundreds of meters from the nearest, but
evidently the process extended at least this far back.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If it <I>was</I> part of the normal growth process, though, it was a
feeble echo of what must have been going on in the heart of the
apical zones. We couldn't observe those directly, not from inside;
barely a hundred meters towards the thorn the tube grew too lethal
even for suicidal flesh. But over those five orbits <I>Rorschach</I>
grew by another eight percent, as mindless and mechanical as a
growing crystal.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Through it all I tried to do my job. I compiled and collated,
massaged data I would never understand. I watched the systems around
me as best I could, factored each tic and trait into the mix. One
part of my mind produced synopses and syntheses while another
watched, incredulous and uncomprehending. Neither part could trace
where those insights had come from.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was difficult, though. Sarasti wouldn't let me back outside the
system. Every observation was contaminated by my own confounding
presence in the mix. I did my best. I made no suggestions that
might affect critical decisions. In the field I did what I was told
to, and no more. I tried to be like one of Bates's drones, a simple
tool with no initiative and no influence on the group dynamic. I
think I pulled it off, for the most part.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My nonsights accumulated on schedule and piled up in <I>Theseus</I>'s
transmission stack, unsent. There was too much local interference to
get a signal through to Earth.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel was right: the ghosts followed us back. We began to hear
voices other than Sarasti's, whispering up the spine. Sometimes even
the brightly-lit wraparound world of the drum would warp and jiggle
from the corner of my eye—and more than once I saw boney
headless phantoms with too many arms, nested in the scaffolding.
They seemed solid enough from the corner of my eye but any spot I
focused on faded to shadow, to a dark translucent stain against the
background. They were so very fragile, these ghosts. The mere act
of observation drilled holes through them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel had rattled off dementias like raindrops. I went to
ConSensus for enlightenment and found a whole other self buried below
the limbic system, below the hindbrain, below even the cerebellum.
It lived in the brain stem and it was older than the vertebrates
themselves. It was self-contained: it heard and saw and felt,
independent of all those other parts layered overtop like
evolutionary afterthoughts. It dwelt on nothing but its own
survival. It had no time for planning or abstract analysis, spared
effort for only the most rudimentary sensory processing. But it was
<I>fast</I>, and it was dedicated, and it could react to threats in a
fraction of the time it took its smarter roommates to even become
<I>aware</I> of them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And even when it couldn't—when the obstinate, unyielding
neocortex refused to let it off the leash—still it tried to
pass on what it saw, and Isaac Szpindel experienced an ineffable
sense of <I>where to reach</I>. In a way, he had a stripped-down
version of the Gang in his head. Everyone did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked further and found God Itself in the meat of the brain, found
the static that had sent Bates into rapture and Michelle into
convulsions. I tracked Gray Syndrome to its headwaters in the
temporal lobe. I heard voices ranting in the brains of
schizophrenics. I found cortical infarcts that inspired people to
reject their own limbs, imagined the magnetic fields that must have
acted in their stead when Cruncher tried to dismember himself. And
off in some half-forgotten pesthole of Twentieth-century case
studies—filed under <I>Cotard's Syndrome</I>—I found
Amanda Bates and others of her kind, their brains torqued into denial
of the very self. &quot;I used to have a heart,&quot; one of them
said listlessly from the archives. &quot;Now I have something that
beats in its place.&quot; Another demanded to be buried, because his
corpse was already stinking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was more, a whole catalog of finely-tuned dysfunctions that
<I>Rorschach</I> had not yet inflicted on us. Somnambulism.
Agnosias. Hemineglect. ConSensus served up a freak show to make
any mind reel at its own fragility: a woman dying of thirst within
easy reach of water, not because she couldn't see the faucet but
because she couldn't <I>recognize </I>it. A man for whom the left
side of the universe did not exist, who could neither perceive nor
<I>conceive</I> of the left side of his body, of a room, of a line of
text. A man for whom the very concept of <I>leftness</I> had become
literally unthinkable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometimes we could conceive of things and still not see them,
although they stood right before us. Skyscrapers appeared out of
thin air, the person talking to us changed into someone else during a
momentary distraction— and we didn't notice. It wasn't magic.
It was barely even misdirection. They called it <I>inattentional
blindness</I>, and it had been well-known for a century or more: a
tendency for the eye to simply <I>not notice</I> things that
evolutionary experience classed as <I>unlikely</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I found the opposite of Szpindel's <I>blindsight</I>, a malady not in
which the sighted believe they are blind but one in which <I>the
blind insist they can see</I>. The very idea was absurd unto
insanity and yet there they were, retinas detached, optic nerves
burned away, any possibility of vision denied by the laws of physics:
bumping into walls, tripping over furniture, inventing endless
ludicrous explanations for their clumsiness. The lights,
unexpectedly turned off by some other party. A colorful bird
glimpsed through the window, distracting attention from the obstacle
ahead. I can see perfectly well, thank you. Nothing wrong with <I>my</I>
eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Gauges in the head, Szpindel had called them. But there were other
things in there too. There was a model of the world, and we didn't
look <I>outward</I> at all; our conscious selves saw only the
simulation in our heads, an <I>interpretation</I> of reality,
endlessly refreshed by input from the senses. What happens when
those senses go dark, but the model—thrown off-kilter by some
trauma or tumor—<I>fails to refresh</I>? How long do we stare
in at that obsolete rendering, recycling and massaging the same old
data in a desperate, subconscious act of utterly honest denial? How
long before it dawns on us that the world we see no longer reflects
the world we inhabit, that we are <I>blind</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Months sometimes, according to the case files. For one poor woman, a
year and more.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Appeals to logic fail utterly. How could you see the bird when there
<I>is</I> no window? How do you decide where your seen half-world
ends if you can't see the other half to weigh it against? If you are
dead, how can you smell your own corruption? If you do not exist,
Amanda, <I>what is talking to us now</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Useless. When you're in the grip of Cotard's Syndrome or hemineglect
you cannot be swayed by argument. When you're in thrall to some
alien artefact you <I>know</I> that the self is gone, that reality
ends at the midline. You know it with the same unshakeable certainty
of any man regarding the location of his own limbs, with that
hardwired awareness that needs no other confirmation. Against that
conviction, what is reason? What is logic?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Inside <I>Rorschach</I>, they had no place at all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On the sixth orbit it acted.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's talking to us,&quot; James said. Her eyes were wide
behind the faceplate, but not bright, not manic. Around us
<I>Rorschach</I>'s guts oozed and crawled at the corner of my eye; it
still took effort to ignore the illusion. Foreign words scrabbled
like small animals below my brainstem as I tried to focus on a ring
of finger-sized protrusions that picketed a patch of wall.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not talking,&quot; Szpindel said from across the artery.
&quot;You're hallucinating again.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates said nothing. Two grunts hovered in the middle of the space,
panning across three axes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's different this time,&quot; James insisted. &quot;The
geometry—it's not so symmetrical. Looks almost like the
Phaistos disk.&quot; She spun slowly, pointed down the passage: &quot;I
think it's stronger down here…&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Bring Michelle out,&quot; Szpindel suggested. &quot;Maybe she
can talk some sense into you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James laughed weakly. &quot;Never say die, do you?&quot; She tweaked
her pistol and coasted into deeper gloom. &quot;Yes, it's definitely
stronger here. There's <I>content</I>, superimposed on—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Quick as a blink, <I>Rorschach</I> cut her off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd never seen anything move so fast before. There was none of the
languor we'd grown accustomed to from <I>Rorschach</I>'s septa, no
lazy drift to contraction; the iris snapped shut in an instant.
Suddenly the artery just <I>ended</I> three meters ahead, with a
matte-black membrane filigreed in fine spiral.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And the Gang of Four was on the other side.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunts were on it immediately, lasers crackling through the air.
Bates was yelling <I>Get behind me! Stick to the walls!</I>, kicking
herself into space like an acrobat in fast-forward, taking some
tactical high ground that must have been obvious to her, at least. I
edged towards the perimeter. Threads of superheated plasma sliced
the air, shimmering. Szpindel, at the corner of my eye, hugged the
opposite side of the tunnel. The walls crawled. I could see the
lasers taking a toll; the septum peeled back from their touch like
burning paper, black oily smoke writhing from its crisping edges and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sudden brightness, everywhere. A riot of fractured light flooded the
artery, a thousand shifting angles of incidence and reflection. It
was like being trapped in the belly of a kaleidoscope, pointed at the
sun. Light—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and needle-sharp pain in my side, in my left arm. The smell
of charred meat. A scream, cut off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Susan? You there, Susan? </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We're taking you </I>first<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Around me, the light died; inside me, a swarm of floaters mixed it up
with the chronic half-visions <I>Rorschach</I> had already planted in
my head. Alarms chirped irritatingly in my helmet— <I>breach,
breach, breach</I>—until the smart fabric of the suit softened
and congealed where the holes had been. Something stung maddeningly
in my left side. I felt as if I'd been branded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Keeton! Check Szpindel!&quot; Bates had called off the
lasers. The grunts closed for hand-to-hand, reaching with fiery
nozzles and diamond-tipped claws to grapple with some prismatic
material glowing softly <I>behind</I> that burnt-back skin.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Fibrous reflector</I>, I realized. It had shattered the laser
light, turned it to luminous shrapnel and thrown it back in our
faces. Clever.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But its surface was still alight, even with the lasers down; a
diffuse glow, dipping and weaving, filtered through from the far side
of the barrier while the drones chewed doggedly through the near one.
After a moment it struck me: James's headlamp.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Keeton!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Right. Szpindel.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His faceplate was intact. The laser had melted the Faraday mesh
laminated onto the crystal, but the suit was sealing that tiny hole
even now. The hole behind, drilled neatly through his forehead,
remained. The eyes beneath stared at infinity.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well?&quot; Bates asked. She could read his vitals as easily
as I, but <I>Theseus</I> was capable of post-mortem rebuilds.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Barring brain damage. &quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The whine of drills and shredders stopped; the ambience brightened.
I looked away from Szpindel's remains. The grunts had cut a hole in
the septum's fibrous underlayer. One of them nosed its way through
to the other side.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A new sound rose into the mix, a soft animal keening, haunted and
dissonant. For a moment I thought <I>Rorschach</I> was whispering to
us again; its walls seemed to contract slightly around me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;James?&quot; Bates snapped. &quot;<I>James!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not James. A little girl in a woman's body in an armored spacesuit,
scared out of her wits.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunt nudged her curled-up body back into our company. Bates
took it gently. &quot;Susan? Come back, Suze. You're safe.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunts hovered restlessly, alert in every direction, pretending
everything was under control. Bates spared me a glance—&quot;Take
Isaac.&quot;—and turned back to James. &quot;Susan?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;N—n-no,&quot; whimpered a small voice, a little girl's
voice.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Michelle? Is that you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There was a <I>thing</I>,&quot; the little girl said. &quot;It
<I>grabbed</I> me. It grabbed my <I>leg</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're out of here.&quot; Bates pulled the Gang back along the
passage. One grunt lingered, watching the hole; the other took
point.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's gone,&quot; Bates said gently. &quot;There's nothing
there now. See the feed?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You can't <I>s</I>-see it.&quot; Michelle whispered. &quot;It's
in—it's in—<I>visible</I>..&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The septum receded around a curve as we retreated. The hole torn
through its center watched us like the ragged pupil of some great
unblinking eye. It stayed empty as long as it stayed in sight.
Nothing came out after us. Nothing we could see. A thought began
cycling through my head, some half-assed eulogy stolen from an
eavesdropped confessional, and try as I might I couldn't shut it
down.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Isaac Szpindel hadn't made the semifinals after all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan James came back to us on the way up. Isaac Szpindel did not.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We stripped wordlessly in the decon balloon. Bates, first out of her
suit, reached for Szpindel but the Gang stopped her with a hand and a
headshake. Personae segued one into another as they stripped the
body. Susan removed helmet and backpack and breastplate. Cruncher
peeled away the silvery leaded skin from collar to toe. Sascha
stripped the jumpsuit and left the pale flesh naked and exposed.
Except for the gloves. They left his feedback gloves in place; their
fingertips forever tactile, the flesh inside forever numb. Through
it all, Szpindel stared unblinking beneath the hole in his forehead.
His glazed eyes focused on distant quasars.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I expected Michelle to appear in her turn and close them, but she
never did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;You
have eyes, but you do not see&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; page-break-after: avoid">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Jesus
the Nazorean</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I don't know how to feel about this</I>, I thought. <I>He was a
good man. He was decent, he was kind to me, even when he didn't know
I was listening in. I didn't know him long— he wasn't a friend
exactly— but still. I should miss him. I should mourn.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I should feel more than this sick sinking fear that I could be
next...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti hadn't wasted any time. Szpindel's replacement met us as we
emerged, freshly thawed, nicotine-scented. The rehydration of his
flesh was ongoing— saline bladders clung to each thigh—although
it would never entirely erase the sharpness of his features. His
bones cracked when he moved.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked past me and took the body. &quot;Susan—Michelle...I—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The gang turned away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He coughed, began fumbling a body condom over the corpse. &quot;Sarasti
wants everyone in the drum.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're hot,&quot; Bates said. Even cut short, the excursion had
piled up a lethal Seivert count. Faint nausea tickled the back of my
throat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Decontaminate later.&quot; One long pull of a zipper and
Szpindel was gone, engulfed in an oily gray shroud. &quot;You—&quot;
he turned in my direction, pointed at the scorched holes in my
jumpsuit. &quot;With me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Robert Cunningham. Another prototype. Dark-haired, hollow-cheeked,
a jaw you could use as a ruler. Both smoother and harsher than the
man he had replaced. Where Szpindel had ticced and jerked as if
static-charged, Cunningham's face held all the expression of a wax
dummy's. The wetware that ran those muscles had been press-ganged
into other pursuits. Even the tremors that afflicted the rest of his
body were muted, soothed by the nicotine he drew with every second
breath.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He held no cigarette now. He held only the shrouded body of his
hard-luck primary and his ongoing, freshly thawed distaste for the
ship's synthesist. His fingers trembled.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates and the Gang moved silently up the spine. Cunningham and I
followed, guiding the Shroud of Szpindel between us. My leg and side
were stinging again, now that Cunningham had reminded them to. There
wouldn't be much he could do about them, though. The beams would
have cauterized the flesh on their way through, and if they'd hit
anything vital I'd have been dead already.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At the hatch we broke into single-file: Szpindel first, Cunningham
pushing at his heels. By the time I emerged into the drum Bates and
the gang were already down on deck and taking their usual seats.
Sarasti, in the flesh, watched them from the end of the conference
table.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His eyes were naked. From this angle the soft, full-spectrum light
of the drum washed the shine from them. If you didn't look too
closely, for too long, you might almost think those eyes were Human.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
BioMed had been spun down for my arrival. Cunningham pointed to a
diagnostic couch on a section of the stilled deck that served as our
infirmary; I floated over and strapped myself in. Two meters away,
past a waist-high guard rail that had risen from the deck, the rest
of the drum rolled smoothly past. It slung Bates and the Gang and
Sarasti around like weights on a string.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tapped ConSensus to hear them. James was speaking, quietly and
without expression. &quot;I noticed a new pattern in the
form-constants. Something in the grating. It looked like a signal.
It got stronger as I went down the tunnel, I followed it, I blacked
out. I don't remember anything more until we were on our way back.
Michelle filled me in, as much as she could. That's all I know. I'm
sorry.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A hundred degrees away in the no-gee zone, Cunningham maneuvered his
predecessor into a coffin with different options than those up front.
I wondered if it would embark on an autopsy during the debriefing.
I wondered if we'd be able to hear the sounds it made.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sascha,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah.&quot; Sascha's trademark drawl infected the voice. &quot;I
was riding Mom. Went deaf dumb and stark fucking blind when she
passed out. I tried to take over but something was blocking me.
Michelle, I guess. Never thought she had it in her. I couldn't even
<I>see</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But you don't lose consciousness.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I was awake the whole time, far as I know. Just completely in
the dark.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Smell? Tactile?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I could feel it when Michelle pissed in the suit. But I didn't
notice anything else.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham was back at my side. The inevitable cigarette had
appeared between his lips.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nothing touches you,&quot; the vampire surmised. &quot;Nothing
grabs your leg.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; Sascha said. She didn't believe Michelle's stories
about invisible monsters. None of us did; why bother, when dementia
could so easily explain anything we experienced?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Cruncher.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Don't know anything,&quot; I still wasn't used to the maleness
of the voice now emanating from James's throat. Cruncher was a
workaholic. He hardly ever surfaced in mixed company.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're there,&quot; Sarasti reminded him. &quot;You must
remember some—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mom sent me patterns to parse. I was working on them. I'm
<I>still</I> working on them,&quot; he added pointedly. &quot;I
didn't notice anything. Is that all?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd never been able to get a good read on him. Sometimes Cruncher
seemed to have more in common with the dozens of nonconscious modules
working in James's head than with sentient hubs comprising the rest
of the Gang. &quot;You feel nothing?&quot; Sarasti pressed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just the patterns.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anything significant?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Standard phenomath spirals and gratings. But I haven't
finished. Can I go now?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes. Call Michelle, please.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham stabbed at my wounds with anabolisers, muttering to
himself. Faint blue smoke curled between us. &quot;Isaac found some
tumors,&quot; he observed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded and coughed. My throat was sore. The nausea had grown
heavy enough to sink below my diaphragm.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Michelle.&quot; Sarasti repeated.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I see some more here,&quot; Cunningham continued. &quot;Along
the bottom of your brain pan. Only a few dozen cells so far, they're
not worth burning yet.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Here.&quot; Michelle's voice was barely audible, even through
ConSensus, but at least it was the voice of an adult. &quot;I'm
here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you remember, please?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I—I felt—I was just riding Mom, and then she was
gone and there was no one else, so I had to—take over…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you see the septum close?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not really. I felt it going dark, but when I turned around we
were already trapped. And then I felt something behind me, it wasn't
loud or harsh it just sort of <I>bumped</I>, and it grabbed me,
and—and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm sorry,&quot; she said after a moment. &quot;I'm a
bit—woozy...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti waited.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Isaac,&quot; Michelle whispered. &quot;He...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes.&quot; A pause. &quot;We're very sorry about that.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe—can he be fixed?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No. There's brain damage.&quot; There was something like
sympathy in the vampire's voice, the practiced affectation of an
accomplished mimic. There was something else, too, an
all-but-imperceptible hunger, a subtle edge of <I>temptation</I>. I
don't think anyone heard it but me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were sick, and getting sicker. Predators are drawn to the weak
and injured.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Michelle had fallen silent again. When she continued, her voice only
faltered a little: &quot;I can't tell you much. It grabbed me. It
let me go. I went to pieces, and I can't explain why except that
fucking place just <I>does</I> things to you, and I was—weak.
I'm sorry. There's not much else to tell you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thank you,&quot; Sarasti said after a long moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can I—I'd like to leave if that's okay.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes,&quot; Sarasti said. Michelle sank below the surface as
the Commons rotated past. I didn't see who took her place.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The grunts didn't see anything,&quot; Bates remarked. &quot;By
the time we broke through the septum the tunnel behind was empty.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Any bogey would have had plenty of time to hightail,&quot;
Cunningham said. He planted his feet on the deck and grabbed a
handhold; the subdrum began to move. I drifted obliquely against my
restraints.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't disagree,&quot; Bates said, &quot;But if there's
anything we've learned about that place, it's that we can't trust our
senses.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Trust Michelle's,&quot; Sarasti said. He opened a window as I
grew heavier: a grunt's-eye view of a fuzzy, bright blob weaving
behind the translucent waxed-paper fibers of the skinned septum.
James's headlight, from the wrong side of the barrier. The image
wobbled a bit as the drone staggered through some local pocket of
magnetism, then replayed. Wobbled, replayed. A six-second loop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;See something next to the Gang.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Non-vampires saw no such thing. Sarasti froze the image, evidently
realizing as much. &quot;Diffraction patterns aren't consistent with
a single light source in open space. I see dimmer elements,
reflective elements. Two dark objects close together, similar size,
scattering light here—&quot; a cursor appeared at two utterly
nondescript points on the image— &quot;and here. One's the
Gang. The other's unaccounted for.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just a minute,&quot; Cunningham said. &quot;If <I>you</I> can
see it through all that, why didn't Su—why didn't <I>Michelle</I>
see anything?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Synesthesiac,&quot; Sarasti reminded him. &quot;You see. She
<I>feels</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
BioMed jerked slightly, locking into spin-synch with the drum; the
guard rail sank back into the deck. Off in some far-off corner,
something without eyes watched me watching it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shit,&quot; Bates whispered. &quot;There's someone home.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They never really talked like that, by the way. You'd hear
gibberish—a half-dozen languages, a whole Babel of personal
idioms—if I spoke in their real voices.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Some of the simpler tics make it through: Sascha's good-natured
belligerence, Sarasti's aversion to the past tense. Cunningham lost
most of his gender pronouns to an unforeseen glitch during the work
on his temporal lobe. But it went beyond that. The whole lot of
them threw English and Hindi and Hadzane into every second sentence;
no real scientist would allow their thoughts to be hamstrung by the
conceptual limitations of a single language. Other times they acted
almost as synthesists in their own right, conversing in grunts and
gestures that would be meaningless to any baseline. It's not so much
that the bleeding edge lacks social skills; it's just that once you
get past a certain point, formal speech is too damn <I>slow</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except for Susan James. The walking contradiction, the woman so
devoted to Communication As Unifier that she'd cut her own brain into
disunified chunks to make the point. She was the only one who ever
seemed to care who she was talking to. The others spoke only for
themselves, even when they spoke to each other. Even James's other
cores would speak their own minds in their own way, and let everyone
else translate as best they could. It wasn't a problem. Everyone on
<I>Theseus</I> could read everyone else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But that didn't matter to Susan James. She fit each of her words to
their intended recipient, she <I>accommodated</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I am a conduit. I exist to bridge the gap, and I'd bridge nothing if
I only told you what these people said. So I am telling you what
they <I>meant</I>, and it will mean as much to you as you can handle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except for Susan James, linguist and Ringleader, whom I trust to
speak for herself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fifteen minutes to apogee: maximum safe distance, in case <I>Rorschach</I>
decided to hit back. Far below, the artefact's magnetic field
pressed into Ben's atmosphere like God's little finger. Great dark
thunderheads converged behind it; turbulent moon-sized curlicues
collided in its wake.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fifteen minutes to apogee, and Bates was still hoping Sarasti would
change his mind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In a way, this was her fault. If she had just treated this new
travail as one more cross to bear, perhaps things would have gone on
more or less as before. There would have been some faint hope that
Sarasti would have let us grit our teeth and keep on going, besieged
now by spring-loaded trapdoors as well as the usual gauntlet of
Seiverts and magnets and monsters from the id. But Bates had made an
<I>issue</I> out of it. It wasn't just another piece of shit in the
sewer to her: it was the one that clogged the pipe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We're on the brink as it is, just surviving the baseline
environment of this thing. If it's started taking deliberate
countermeasures…I don't see how we can risk it.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fourteen minutes to apogee, and Amanda Bates was still regretting
those words.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On previous expeditions we'd charted twenty-six septa in various
stages of development. We'd x-rayed them. We'd done ultrasound.
We'd watched them ooze their way across passages or ebb slowly back
into the walls. The iris that had snapped shut behind the Gang of
Four had been a whole different animal.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And what are the odds that the first one with a hair-trigger just
happened to also come with antilaser prismatics? That was no routine
growth event. That thing was </I>set<I> for us.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Set by…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was the other thing. Thirteen minutes to apogee, and Bates was
worried about the tenants.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It had always been breaking and entering, of course. That much
hadn't changed. But when we'd jimmied the lock we'd thought we were
vandalizing an empty summer cottage, still under construction. We'd
thought the owners would be out of the picture for a while. We
hadn't been expecting one of them to catch us on his way to take a
late-night piss. And now that one had, and vanished into the
labyrinth, it was natural to wonder what weapons it might keep
stashed under the pillow…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Those septa could spring on us any time. How many are there? Are
they fixed, or portable? We can't proceed without knowing these
things.</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At first, Bates had been surprised and delighted when Sarasti agreed
with her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Twelve minutes to apogee. From this high ground, well above the
static, <I>Theseus</I> peered down through <I>Rorschach</I>'s
wrenched and twisted anatomy to keep rock-steady eyes on the tiny
wound we'd burned in its side. Our limpet tent covered it like a
blister; inside, Jack fed us a second, first-person view of the
unfolding experiment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Sir. We know Rorschach is inhabited. Do we want to risk further
provoking the inhabitants? Do we want to risk </I>killing<I> them?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti hadn't quite looked at her, and hadn't quite spoken. If he
had, he might have said <I>I do not understand how meat like you
survived to adulthood</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Eleven minutes to apogee, and Amanda Bates was lamenting the fact—not
for the first time— that this mission was not under military
jurisdiction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were waiting for maximum distance before performing the
experiment. <I>Rorschach might interpret this as a hostile act</I>,
Sarasti had conceded in a voice that contained no trace of irony
whatsoever. Now he stood before us, watching ConSensus play on the
table. Reflections writhed across his naked eyes, not quite masking
the deeper reflections behind them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ten minutes to apogee. Susan James was wishing that Cunningham would
put out that goddamned cigarrette. The smoke stank on its way to the
ventilators, and anyway, it wasn't <I>necessary.</I> It was just an
anachronistic affectation, an attention-getting device; if he needed
the nicotine a patch could have soothed his tremors just as easily,
without the smoke and the stink.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That wasn't all she was thinking, though. She was wondering why
Cunningham had been summoned to Sarasti's quarters earlier in the
shift, why he'd looked at her so strangely afterward. I wondered
about that myself. A quick check on ConSensus timestamps showed that
her medical file had been accessed during that period. I checked
those stats, let the shapes bounce between hemispheres: part of my
brain locked on <I>elevated oxytocin</I> as the probable reason for
that conference. There was an eighty-two percent chance that James
had become too <I>trusting</I> for Sarasti's liking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I had no idea how I knew that. I never did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nine minutes to apogee.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Barely a molecule of <I>Rorschach</I>'s atmosphere had been lost on
our account. That was all about to change. Our view of base camp
split like a dividing bacterium: one window now focused on the
limpet tent, the other on a wide-angle tactical enhance of the space
around it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Eight minutes to apogee. Sarasti pulled the plug.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Down on <I>Rorschach</I>, our tent burst like a bug beneath a boot.
A geyser erupted from the wound; a snowstorm swirled at its edges,
its charged curlicues intricate as lace. Atmosphere gushed into
vacuum, spread thin, crystallized. Briefly, the space around base
camp <I>sparkled</I>. It was almost beautiful.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates didn't think it was beautiful at all. She watched that
bleeding wound with a face as expressionless as Cunningham's, but her
jaw was clenched unto tetanus. Her eyes darted between views:
watching for things gasping in the shadows.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I> convulsed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Vast trunks and arteries shuddered, a seismic tremor radiating out
along the structure. The epicenter began to <I>twist</I>, a vast
segment rotating on its axis, the breach midway along its length.
Stress lines appeared where the length that rotated sheared against
the lengths to either side that didn't; the structure seemed to
soften and stretch there, constricting like a great elongate balloon
torqueing itself into sausage links.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked. Cats made something like that sound when they spied
a bird on the far side of a windowpane.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
ConSensus groaned with the sound of worlds scraping against each
other: telemetry from the onsite sensors, their ears to the ground.
Jack's camera controls had frozen again. The image it sent was
canted and grainy. The pickup stared blankly at the edge of the
hole we'd bored into the underworld.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The groaning subsided. A final faint cloud of crystalline stardust
dissipated into space, barely visible even on max enhance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No bodies. None visible, anyway.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sudden motion at base camp. At first I thought it was static on
Jack's feed, playing along lines of high contrast—but no,
something was definitely moving along the edges of the hole we'd
burned. Something almost <I>wriggled</I> there, a thousand gray
mycelia extruding from the cut surface and writhing slowly into the
darkness. &quot;It's—huh,&quot; Bates said. &quot;Triggered
by the pressure drop, I guess. That's one way to seal a breach.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Two weeks after we'd wounded it, <I>Rorschach</I> had begun to heal
itself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Apogee behind us now. All downhill from here. <I>Theseus</I> began
the long drop back into enemy territory.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Doesn't use septa,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;My
genes done gone and tricked my brain<br>
By making fucking feel so great<br>
That's how the little creeps attain<br>
Their plan to fuckin' replicate<br>
But brain's got tricks itself, you see<br>
To get the bang but not the bite<br>
I got this here vasectomy<br>
My genes can fuck <I>themselves</I><SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal">
tonight.</SPAN>&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<BR>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">The
r-selectors, <I>Trunclade</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
First-person sex—<I>real</I> sex, as Chelsea insisted on
calling it—was an acquired taste: jagged breathing, the raw
slap and stink of sweaty skin full of pores and blemishes, a whole
other person with a whole other set of demands and dislikes. There
was definite animal appeal, no doubt about it. This was, after all,
how we'd done it for millions of years. But this, this third-world
carnality had always carried an element of struggle, of asynchronous
patterns in conflict. There was no convergence here. There was only
the rhythm of bodies in collision, a struggle for dominance, each
trying to force the other into synch.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea regarded it as love in its purest form. I came to think of
it as hand-to-hand combat. Before, whether fucking creations from my
own menu or slip-on skins from someone else's, <I> I</I> had always
selected the contrast and the rez, the texture and the attitude. The
bodily functions, the resistance of competing desires, the endless
foreplay that wears your tongue to the root and leaves your face
sticky and glistening—just kinks, today. Options for the
masochistic.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But there were no options with Chelsea. With her, everything came
standard.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I indulged her. I guess I was no more patient with her perversions
than she was with my ineptitude at them. Other things made it worth
the effort. Chelsea would argue about anything under the sun, wry
and insightful and curious as a cat. She would pounce without
warning. Retired to the redundant majority, she still took such
simple joy in the very act of being <I>alive</I>. She was impulsive
and impetuous. She cared about people. Pag. <I>Me</I>. She wanted
to know me. She wanted in.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was proving to be a problem.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We could try it again,&quot; she said once in an aftermath of
sweat and pheromones. &quot;And you won't even remember what you
were so upset about. You won't even remember you <I>were</I> upset,
if you don't want to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I smiled and looked away; suddenly the planes of her face were
coarse and unappealing. &quot;How many times is that now? Eight?
Nine?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I just want you to be <I>happy</I>, Cyg. True happiness is one
hell of a gift, and I can give it to you if you'll let me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't want me happy,&quot; I said pleasantly. &quot;You
want me customized.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She <I>mmm'd</I> into the hollow of my throat for a moment. Then:
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You just want to change me into something more, more
<I>accommodating</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea lifted her head. &quot;Look at me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned my head. She'd shut down the chromatophores in her cheek;
the tattoo, transplanted, fluttered now on her shoulder.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Look at my <I>eyes</I>,&quot; Chelsea said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at the imperfect skin around them, at the capillaries
wriggling across the whites. I felt a distant bemusement that such
flawed, decaying organs were still able to hypnotize me on occasion.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now,&quot; Chelsea said. &quot;What do you mean by that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged. &quot;You keep pretending this is a partnership. We
both know it's a competition.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A competition.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're trying to manipulate me into playing by your rules.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What <I>rules</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The way you want the relationship run. I don't blame you,
Chelse, not in the least. We've been trying to manipulate each other
for as long as—hell, it's not even Human nature. It's
<I>mammalian</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't believe it.&quot; She shook her head. Ropy tendrils
of hair swung across her face. &quot;It's the middle of the
twenty-first Century and you're hitting me with this <I>war of the
sexes</I> bullshit?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Granted, your <I>tweaks</I> are a pretty radical iteration.
Get right in there and reprogram your mate for optimum servility.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You actually think I'm trying to, to <I>housebreak</I> you?
You think I'm trying to train you like a puppy?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're just doing what comes naturally.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can't believe you'd pull this shit on me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought you valued honesty in relationships.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>What</I> relationship? According to you there's no such
thing. This is just—mutual rape, or something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's what relationships <I>are</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Don't pull that shit on me</I>.&quot; She sat up, swung
her feet over the edge of the bed. Putting her back to me. &quot;I
know how I <I>feel</I>. If I know <I>anything</I> I know that much.
And I only wanted to make you happy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know you believe that,&quot; I said gently. &quot;I know it
doesn't <I>feel</I> like a strategy. Nothing does when it's wired
that deeply. It just feels <I>right</I>, it feels natural. It's
nature's trick.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's <I>someone</I>'s fucking trick.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I sat up next to her, let my shoulder brush hers. She leaned away.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know this stuff,&quot; I said after a while. &quot;I know
how people work. It's my job.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was hers too, for that matter. Nobody who spliced brains for a
living could possibly be unaware of all that basic wiring in the
sub-basement. Chelsea had simply chosen to ignore it; to have
admitted anything would have compromised her righteous anger.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could have pointed that out too, I suppose, but I knew how much
stress the system could take and I wasn't ready to test it to
destruction. I didn't want to lose her. I didn't want to lose that
feeling of safety, that sense that it made a difference whether I
lived or died. I only wanted her to back off a bit. I only wanted
room to breathe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You can be such a reptile sometimes,&quot; she said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Mission accomplished.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Our first approach had been all caution and safety margins. This
time we came in like a strike force.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Scylla</I> burned towards <I>Rorschach</I> at over two gees, its
trajectory a smooth and predictable arc ending at the ruptured base
camp. It may have even landed there, for all I know; perhaps Sarasti
had two-birded the mission, programmed the shuttle for some
collecting of its own. If so, it wouldn't land with us on board.
<I>Scylla</I> spat us into space almost fifty kilometers short of the
new beachhead, left us naked and plummeting on some wireframe
contraption with barely enough reaction mass for a soft landing and a
quick getaway. We didn't even have control over <I>that</I>:
success depended on unpredictability, and how better to ensure that
than to not even know ourselves what we were doing?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti's logic. Vampire logic. We could follow it partway: the
colossal deformation that had sealed <I>Rorschach</I>'s breach was so
much slower, so much more expensive than the dropgate that had
trapped the Gang. The fact that dropgates <I>hadn't</I> been used
implied that they took time to deploy—to redistribute necessary
mass, perhaps, or spring-load its reflexes. That gave us a window.
We could still venture into the den so long as the lions couldn't
predict our destination and set traps in advance. So long as we got
out again before they could set them afterwards.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thirty-seven minutes,&quot; Sarasti had said, and none of us
could fathom how he'd come to that number. Only Bates had dared to
ask aloud, and he had merely glinted at her: &quot;You can't
follow.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Vampire logic. From an obvious premise to an opaque conclusion. Our
lives depended on it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The retros followed some preprogrammed algorithm that mated Newton
with a roll of the dice. Our vector wasn't completely random—once
we'd eliminated raceways and growth zones, areas without
line-of-sight escape routes, dead ends and unbranched segments
(&quot;Boring,&quot; Sarasti said, dismissing them), barely ten
percent of the artefact remained in the running. Now we dropped
towards a warren of brambles eight kilometers from our original
landing site. Here in the midst of our final approach, there was no
way that even <I>we</I> could predict our precise point of impact.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If <I>Rorschach</I> could, it deserved to win.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We fell. Ridged spires and gnarled limbs sectioned the sky wherever
I looked, cut the distant starscape and the imminent superJovian into
a jagged mosaic veined in black. Three kilometers away or thirty,
the tip of some swollen extremity burst in a silent explosion of
charged particles, a distant fog of ruptured, freezing atmosphere.
Even as it faded I could make out wisps and streamers swirling into
complex spirals: <I>Rorschach</I>'s magnetic field, sculpting the
artefact's very breath into radioactive sleet.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd never seen it with naked eyes before. I felt like an insect on a
starry midwinter's night, falling through the aftermath of a forest
fire.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The sled fired its brakes. I snapped back against the webbing of my
harness, bumped against the rebounding armored body next to me.
Sascha. <I>Only Sascha</I>, I remembered. Cunningham had sedated
the rest of them, left this one core lonely and alone in the group
body. I hadn't even realized that that was possible with multiple
personalities. She stared back at me from behind her faceplate.
None of her surfaces showed through the suit. I could see nothing in
her eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was happening so often, these days.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham was not with us. Nobody had asked why, when Sarasti
assigned the berths. The biologist was first among equals now, a
backup restored with no other behind him. The second-least
replaceable of our irreplaceable crew.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It made me a better bargain. The odds I bought had increased to one
in three.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A silent bump shuddered up the frame. I looked forward again, past
Bates on the front pallet, past the anchored drones that flanked her
two to each side. The sled had launched its assault, a prefab
inflatable vestibule mounted on an explosive injection assembly that
would punch through <I>Rorschach</I>'s skin like a virus penetrating
a host cell. The spindle-legged contraption dwindled and disappeared
from my sight. Moments later a pinpoint sodium sun flared and died
against the ebony landscape ahead—antimatter charge, so small
you could almost count the atoms, shot directly into the hull. A lot
rougher than the tentative foreplay of our first date.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We landed, hard, while the vestibule was still inflating. The grunts
were off the sled an instant before contact, spitting tiny puffs of
gas from their nozzles, arranging themselves around us in a
protective rosette. Bates was up next, leaping free of her
restraints and sailing directly towards the swelling hab. Sascha and
I unloaded the fiberop hub—a clamshell drum half a meter thick
and three times as wide—lugging it between us while one of the
grunts slipped through the vestibule's membranous airlock.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Let's move, people.&quot; Bates was hanging off one of the
inflatable's handholds. &quot;Thirty minutes to—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She fell silent. I didn't have to ask why: the advance grunt had
positioned itself over the newly-blasted entrance and sent back its
first postcard.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Light from below.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You'd think that would have made it easier. Our kind has always
feared the dark; for millions of years we huddled in caves and
burrows while unseen things snuffled and growled—or just
<I>waited</I>, silent and undetectable—in the night beyond.
You'd think that any light, no matter how meager, might strip away
some of the shadows, leave fewer holes for the mind to fill with
worst imaginings.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You'd think.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We followed the grunt down into a dim soupy glow like blood-curdled
milk. At first it seemed as though the atmosphere itself was alight,
a luminous fog that obscured anything more than ten meters distant.
An illusion, as it turned out; the tunnel we emerged into was about
three meters wide and lit by rows of raised glowing dashes—the
size and approximate shape of dismembered human fingers—wound
in a loose triple helix around the walls. We'd recorded similar
ridges at the first site, although the breaks had not been so
pronounced and the ridges had been anything but luminous.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Stronger in the near-infrared,&quot; Bates reported, flashing
the spectrum to our HUDs. The air would have been transparent to pit
vipers. It <I>was</I> transparent to sonar: the lead grunt sprayed
the fog with click trains and discovered that the tunnel widened into
some kind of chamber seventeen meters further along. Squinting in
that direction I could just make out subterranean outlines through
the mist. I could just make out jawed things, pulling back out of
sight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Let's go,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We plugged in the grunts, left one guarding the way out. Each of us
took another as a guardian angel on point. The machines spoke to our
HUDs via laser link; they spoke to each other along stiffened lengths
of shielded fiberop that unspooled from the hub trailing in our wake.
It was the best available compromise in an environment without any
optima. Our tethered bodyguards would keep us all in touch during
lone excursions around corners or down dead ends.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Yeah. <I>Lone</I> excursions. Forced to either split the group or
cover less ground, we were to split the group. We were
speed-cartographers panning for gold. Everything we did here was an
act of faith: faith that the unifying principles of <I>Rorschach</I>'s
internal architecture could be derived from the raw dimensions we'd
grab on the run. Faith that <I>Rorschach</I>'s internal architecture
even <I>had</I> unifying principles. Earlier generations had
worshipped malign and capricious spirits. Ours put its faith in an
ordered universe. Here in the Devil's Baklava, it was easy to wonder
if our ancestors hadn't been closer to the mark.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We moved along the tunnel. Our destination resolved to merely human
eyes: not so much chamber as <I>nexus</I>, a knot of space formed by
the convergence of a dozen tunnels angling in from different
orientations. Ragged meshes of quicksilver dots gleamed along
several glistening surfaces; shiny protrusions poked through the
substrate like a scattershot blast of ball-bearings pressed into wet
clay.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at Bates and Sascha. &quot;Control panel?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shrugged. Her drones panned the throats around us, spraying
sonar down each. My HUD sketched a patchy three-d model from the
echoes: swathes of paint thrown against invisible walls. We were
dots near the center of a ganglion, a tiny swarm of parasites
infesting some great hollowed host. Each tunnel curved away in a
gradual spiral, each along a different orientation. Sonar could peep
around those bends a few meters further than we could. Neither eyes
nor ultrasonics saw anything to distinguish one choice from another.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates pointed down one of the passageways—&quot;Keeton—&quot;
and another— &quot;Sascha,&quot; before turning to coast off
down her own unbeaten path.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked uneasily down mine. &quot;Any particular—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Twenty-five minutes,&quot; she said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned and jetted slowly down my assigned passageway. The passage
curved clockwise, a long unremarkable spiral; after twenty meters
that curvature would have blocked any view of its entrance even if
the foggy atmosphere hadn't. My drone kept point across the tunnel,
its sonar clicking like the chattering of a thousand tiny teeth, its
tether unspooling back to the distant drum in the nexus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was a comfort, that leash. It was <I>short</I>. The grunts could
stray ninety meters and no further, and we were under strict orders
to stay under their wings at all times. This dim infested burrow
might lead all the way to hell, but I would not be expected to follow
it nearly so far. My cowardice had official sanction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fifty meters to go. Fifty meters and I could turn and run with my
tail between my legs. In the meantime all I had to do was grit my
teeth, and focus, and record: <I>everything you see</I>, Sarasti had
said. <I> As much as possible of what you can't</I>. And hope that
this new reduced time limit would expire before <I>Rorschach</I>
spiked us into gibbering dementia.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The walls around me twitched and shivered like the flesh of something
just-killed. Something darted in and out of sight with a faint cackle
of laughter.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Focus. Record</I>. <I>If the grunt doesn't see it, it's not
real.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sixty-five meters in, one of the ghosts got inside my helmet.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to ignore it. I tried to look away. But this phantom wasn't
flickering at the edge of vision; it hovered near the center of my
faceplate, floating like a spot of swirling dizziness between me and
the HUD. I gritted my teeth and tried to look past, stared into the
dim bloody haze of the middle distance, watched the jerky unfolding
travelogues in the little windows labeled <I>Bates</I> and <I>James</I>.
Nothing out there. But in <I>here</I>, floating before my eyes,
<I>Rorschach</I>'s latest headfuck smeared a fuzzy thumbprint right
in front of the sonar feed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;New symptom,&quot; I called in. &quot;Nonperipheral
hallucination, stable, pretty formless though. No spiking that I
can—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The inset marked <I>Bates</I> skidded hard about. &quot;<I>Keet—</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Window and voice cut out together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not just Bates' window, either. Sascha's inset and the drone's-eye
sonarscape flickered and died at the same moment, stripped my HUD
bare except for in-suit feeds and a little red readout flashing Link
Down. I spun but the grunt was still there, three meters off my
right shoulder. Its optical port was clearly visible, a ruby
thumbnail set into the plastron.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Its gun ports were visible too. Pointing at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I froze. The drone <I>shivered</I> in some local electromagnetic
knot as if terrified. Of me, or—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of something <I>behind</I> me…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I started to turn. My helmet filled with sudden static, and with what
sounded—faintly—like a voice:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;—ucking<I> move</I>, Kee—not—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Bates? <I>Bates?</I>&quot; Another icon had bloomed in place
of Link Down. The grunt was using <I>radio</I> for some reason—and
though almost close enough to touch, I could barely make out the
signal.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A hash of Batespeak: &quot;—to your—right in<I> front</I>
of—&quot; and Sascha as well, a bit more clearly: &quot;—an't
he <I>see</I> it?...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;See what? <I>Sascha! </I>Someone tell me what—see <I>what</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;—read? Keeton, do you read?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Somehow Bates had boosted the signal; static roared like an ocean,
but I could hear the words behind it. &quot;Yes! What—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Keep absolutely still</I>, do you understand? <I>Absolutely
still.</I> Acknowledge.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Acknowledged.&quot; The drone kept me in its shaky sights,
dark stereocam irises spasming wide, stuttering to pinpoints. &quot;Wha—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There's something in front of you, Keeton. Directly between
you and the grunt. Can't you see it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;N-no. My HUD's down—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha broke in: &quot;How can he not <I>see</I> it it's right <I>th—</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates barked over her: &quot;It's man-sized, radially symmetrical,
eight, nine arms. Like tentacles, but—segmented. Spiky.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't see anything,&quot; I said. But I did: I saw something
reaching for me, in my pod back aboard <I>Theseus</I>. I saw
something curled up motionless in the ship's spine, watching as we
laid our best plans.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I saw Michelle the synesthesiac, curled into a fetal ball: <I>You
can't see it...it's in—</I>visible...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's it doing?&quot; I called. <I> Why can't I see it? Why
can't I </I>see<I> it?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just—floating there. Kind of waving. Oh, <I>sh</I><I>Keet—</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunt skidded sideways, as if slapped by a giant hand. It
bounced off the wall and suddenly the laser link was back, filling
the HUD with intelligence: first-person perspectives of Bates and
Sascha racing along alien tunnels, a grunt's-eye view of a space suit
with <I>Keeton</I> stenciled across its breastplate and there, right
beside it, some <I>thing</I> like a rippling starfish with too many
arms—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang barreled around the curve and now I almost <I>could</I> see
something with my own eyes, flickering like heat-lightning off to one
side. It was large, and it was moving, but somehow my eyes just <I>slid
off</I> every time they tried to get a fix. <I>It's not real</I>, I
thought, giddy with hysterical relief, <I>it's just another
hallucination</I> but then Bates sailed into view and it was <I>right
there</I>, no flickering, no uncertainty, nothing but a collapsed
probability wave and solid, undeniable mass. Exposed, it grabbed the
nearest wall and scrambled over our heads, segmented arms flailing
like whips. A sudden crackling buzz in the back of my head and it
was drifting free again, charred and smoking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A stuttering click. The whine of machinery gearing down. Three
grunts hovered in formation in the middle of the passageway. One
faced the alien. I glimpsed the tip of some lethal proboscis sliding
back into its sheath. Bates shut the grunt down before it had
finished closing its mouth.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Optical links and three sets of lungs filled my helmet with a roar of
heavy breathing.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The offlined grunt drifted in the murky air. The alien carcass
bumped gently off the wall, twitching: a hydra of human backbones,
scorched and fleshless. It didn't look much like my on-board visions
after all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For some reason I couldn't put my finger on, I found that almost
reassuring.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The two active grunts panned the fog until Bates gave them new
orders; then one turned to secure the carcass, the other to steady
its fallen comrade. Bates grabbed the dead grunt and unplugged its
tether. &quot;Fall back. Slowly. I'm right behind you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tweaked my jets. Sascha hesitated. Coils of shielded cable
floated about us like umbilical cords.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Now</I>,&quot; Bates said, plugging a feed from her own suit
directly into the offlined grunt.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha started after me. Bates took up the rear. I watched my HUD;
a swarm of multiarmed monsters would appear there any moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They didn't. But the blackened thing against the belly of Bates'
machine was real enough. Not a hallucination. Not even some
understandable artefact of fear and synesthesia. <I>Rorschach</I>
was inhabited. Its inhabitants were invisible.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometimes. Sort of.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And, oh yeah. We'd just killed one.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates threw the deactivated grunt into the sky as soon as we'd made
vacuum. Its comrades used it for target practice while we strapped
in, firing and firing until there was nothing left but cooling vapor.
<I>Rorschach</I> spun even that faint plasma into filigree before it
faded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Halfway back to <I>Theseus</I>, Sascha turned to the Major: &quot;You—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But— they do shit on their own, right? Autonomous.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not when they're slaved.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Malfunction? Spike?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates didn't answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She called ahead. By the time we made it back Cunningham had grown
another little tumor on <I>Theseus</I>' spine, a remote surgery
packed with teleops and sensors. One of the surviving grunts grabbed
the carcass and jumped ship as soon as we passed beneath the
carapace, completing the delivery as we docked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were born again to the fruits of a preliminary necropsy. The
holographic ghost of the dissected alien rose from ConSensus like
some flayed and horrific feast. Its splayed arms looked like human
spinal columns. We sat around the table and waited for someone else
to take the first bite.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did you have to shoot it with <I>microwaves</I>?&quot;
Cunningham sniped, tapping the table. &quot;You completely <I>cooked</I>
the animal. Every cell was blown out from the inside.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shook her head. &quot;There was a malfunction.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He gave her a sour look. &quot;A malfunction that just happens to
involve precise targeting of a moving object. It doesn't sound
random to me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates looked back evenly. &quot;Something flipped autonomous
targeting from <I>off</I> to <I>on</I>. A coin toss. Random.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Random is—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Give it a rest, Cunningham. I don't need this shit from you
right now.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His eyes rolled in that smooth dead face, focused suddenly on
something overhead. I followed his gaze: Sarasti stared down at us
like an owl panning for meadow voles, drifting slowly in the
Coriolis breeze.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No visor this time, either. I knew he hadn't lost it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He fixed Cunningham. &quot;Your findings.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham swallowed. Bits and pieces of alien anatomy flickered
with color-coded highlights as he tapped his fingers. &quot;Right,
then. I'm afraid I can't give you much at the cellular level.
There's not much left inside the membranes. Not many membranes left,
for that matter. In terms of gross morphology, the specimen's
dorsoventrally compressed and radially symmetrical, as you can see.
Calcareous exoskeleton, keratinised plastic cuticle. Nothing
special.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates looked skeptical. &quot;<I>Plastic skin</I> is 'nothing
special'?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Given the environment I was half-expecting a Sanduloviciu
plasma. Plastic's simply refined petroleum. Organocarbon. This
thing is carbon-based. It's even <I>protein</I> based, although its
proteins are a great deal tougher than ours. Numerous sulphur
cross-bonds for lateral bracing, as far as I could tell from what
your grunts didn't denature.&quot; Cunningham's eyes looked past us
all; his consciousness was obviously far aft, haunting remote
sensors. &quot;The thing's tissues are saturated with magnetite. On
earth you find that material in dolphin brains, migratory birds, even
some bacteria—anything that navigates or orients using magnetic
fields. Moving up to macrostructures we've got a pneumatic internal
skeleton, which as far as I can tell doubles as musculature.
Contractile tissue squeezes gas through a system of bladders that
stiffen or relax each segment in the arms.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The light came back into Cunningham's eyes long enough to focus on
his cigarette. He brought it to his mouth, dragged deeply, set it
down again. &quot;Note the invaginations around the base of each
arm.&quot; Flaccid balloons glowed orange on the virtual carcass.
&quot;<I>Cloacae</I>, you could call them. Everything opens into
them: they eat, breathe, and defecate through the same little
compartment. No other major orifices.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang made a face that said <I>Sascha, grossed out</I>. &quot;Don't
things get—clogged up? Seems inefficient.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If one gets plugged, there's eight other doors into the same
system. You'll wish you were so <I>inefficient</I> the next time you
choke on a chicken bone.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What <I>does</I> it eat?&quot; Bates asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I couldn't say. I found gizzard-like contractiles around the
cloacae, which implies they <I>chew</I> on something, or did at some
point in their history. Other than that...&quot; He spread his
hands; the cigarette left faint streamers in its wake. &quot;Inflate
those contractiles enough and you create an airtight seal, by the
way. In conjunction with the cuticle, that would allow this organism
to survive briefly in vacuum. And we already know it can handle the
ambient radiation, although don't ask me how. Whatever it uses for
genes must be a great deal tougher than ours.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So it can survive in space,&quot; Bates mused.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;In the sense that a dolphin survives underwater. Limited time
only.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How long?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm not certain.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Central nervous system,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates and the Gang grew suddenly, subtly still. James's affect
seeped out over her body, supplanting Sascha's.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Smoke curled from Cunningham's mouth and nose. &quot;There's nothing
<I>central</I> about it, as it transpires. No cephalisation, not
even clustered sense organs. The body's covered with something like
eyespots, or chromatophores, or both. There are setae everywhere.
And as far as I can tell—if all those little cooked filaments
I've been able to put back together after your <I>malfunction</I>
really are nerves and not something completely different—every
one of those structures is under independent control.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates sat up straight. &quot;Seriously?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded. &quot;It would be akin to independently controlling the
movement of each individual hair on your head, although this creature
is <I>covered</I> with little hairs from tip to tip. The same thing
applies to the eyes. Hundreds of thousands of eyes, all over the
cuticle. Each one is barely more than a pinhole camera, but each is
capable of independent focus and I'm guessing all the different
inputs integrate somewhere up the line. The entire body acts like a
single diffuse retina. In theory that gives it enormous visual
acuity.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A distributed telescope array,&quot; Bates murmured.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A chromatophore underlies each eye—the pigment's some
kind of cryptochrome so it's probably involved in vision, but it can
also diffuse or contract through the local tissue. That implies
dynamic pigment patterns, like a squid or a chameleon.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Background pattern-matching?&quot; Bates asked. &quot;Would
that explain why Siri couldn't see it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham opened a new window and played grainy looped imagery of
Siri Keeton and his unseen dance partner. The creature I hadn't
noticed was ominously solid to the cameras: a floating discoid
twice as wide as my own torso, arms extending from its edges like
thick knotted ropes. Patterns rippled across its surface in waves;
sunlight and shadow playing on a shallow seabed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As you can see, the background doesn't match the pattern,&quot;
Cunningham said. &quot;It's not even close.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can you explain Siri's blindness to it?&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can't,&quot; Cunningham admitted. &quot;It's beyond ordinary
crypsis. But <I>Rorschach</I> makes you see all sorts of things that
aren't there. Not seeing something that <I>is</I> there might come
down to essentially the same thing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Another hallucination?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Another shrug while Cunningham sucked smoke. &quot;There are many
ways to fool the human visual system. It's interesting that the
illusion failed when multiple witnesses were present, but if you want
a definitive mechanism you'll have to give me more to work with than
<I>that</I>.&quot; He stabbed his cigarette hand at the crisped
remains.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—&quot; James took a breath, bracing herself—
&quot;We're talking about something... sophisticated, at least.
Something very complex. A great deal of processing power.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham nodded again. &quot;I'd estimate nervous tissue accounts
for about thirty percent of body mass.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So it's intelligent.&quot; Her voice was almost a whisper.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not remotely.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—thirty percent—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thirty percent <I>motor and sensory</I> wiring.&quot; Another
drag. &quot;Much like an octopus; an enormous number of neurons, but
half of them get used up running the suckers.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My understanding is that octopi are quite intelligent,&quot;
James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;By molluscan standards, certainly. But do you have any <I>idea</I>
how much extra cabling you'd need if the photoreceptors in your eye
were spread across your entire body? You'd need about three hundred
million extension cords to begin with, ranging from half a millimeter
to two meters long. Which means all your signals are staggered and
out of synch, which means billions of additional logic gates to
cohere the input. And that just gets you a single static image, with
no filtering, no interpretation, no time-series integration at all.&quot;
Shiver. Drag. &quot;Now multiply that by all the extra wiring
needed to <I>focus </I>all those eyespots on an object, or to send
all that information back to individual chromatophores, and then add
in the processing power you need to <I>drive</I> those chromatophores
one at a time. Thirty percent might do all that, but I strongly
doubt you'd have much left over for philosophy and science.&quot; He
waved his hand in the general direction of the hold. &quot;That—that—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Scrambler,</I>&quot; James suggested.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham rolled his tongue around it. &quot;Very well. That
<I>scrambler</I> is an absolute miracle of evolutionary engineering.
It's also dumb as a stick.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A moment's silence.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what <I>is</I> it?&quot; James asked at last. &quot;Somebody's
pet?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Canary in a coal mine,&quot; Bates suggested.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Perhaps not even that,&quot; Cunningham said. &quot;Perhaps no
more than a white blood cell with waldoes. Maintenance bot, maybe.
Teleoperated, or instinct-driven. But people, we're ignoring far
greater questions here. How could an anaerobe even develop complex
multicellular anatomy, much less move as <I>fast</I> as this thing
did? That level of activity burns a great deal of ATP.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe they don't use ATP,&quot; Bates said as I thumbnailed:
<I>adenosine triphosphate</I>. Cellular energy source.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was <I>crammed</I> with ATP,&quot; Cunningham told her.
&quot;You can tell that much even with <I>these</I> remains. The
question is, how can it synthesize the stuff fast enough to keep up
with demand. Purely anaerobic pathways wouldn't suffice.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody offered any suggestions.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Anyway,&quot; he said, &quot;So endeth the lesson. If you want
gory details, check ConSensus.&quot; He wiggled the fingers of his
free hand: the spectral dissection vanished. &quot;I'll keep
working, but if you want any real answers go get me a live one.&quot;
He butted out his cigarette against the bulkhead and stared
defiantly around the drum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The others hardly reacted; their topologies still sparkled from the
revelations of a few minutes before. Perhaps Cunningam's pet peeve
<I>was </I>more important to the Big Picture; perhaps, in a
reductionist universe, biochemical basics should always take priority
over the finer points of ETI and interspecies etiquette. But Bates
and the Gang were time-lagged, processing earlier revelations. Not
just <I>processing</I>, either: wallowing. They clung to
Cunningham's findings like convicted felons who'd just discovered
they might be freed on a technicality.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because the scrambler was dead at our hands, no doubt about it. But
it wasn't an <I>alien</I>, not really. It wasn't <I>intelligent</I>.
It was just a blood cell with waldoes. It was dumb as a stick.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Problems
cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Einstein</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Robert Paglino had set me up with Chelsea in the first place. Maybe
he felt responsible when the relationship started jumping the rails.
Or maybe Chelsea, Madam Fix-It that she was, had approached him for
an intervention. For whatever reason, it was obvious the moment we
took our seats at QuBit's that his invitation had not been entirely
social.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He went for some neurotrope cocktail on the rocks. I stuck with
Rickard's.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Still old-school,&quot; Pag said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Still into foreplay,&quot; I observed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That obvious, huh?&quot; He took a sip. &quot;That'll teach
me to try the subtle approach with a professional jargonaut.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jargonaut's got nothing to do with it. You wouldn't have
fooled a border collie.&quot; Truth be told, Pag's topology never
really told me much that I didn't already know. I never really had
much of an edge in reading him. Maybe we just knew each other too
well.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So,&quot; he said, &quot;spill.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nothing to spill. She just got to know the real me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That <I>is</I> bad.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What'd she tell you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Me? Nothing at all.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I gave him a look over the top of my glass.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He sighed. &quot;She knows you're cheating on her.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Cheating. With the skin.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's based on <I>her</I>!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But it <I>isn't</I> her.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No it isn't. It doesn't fart or fight or break into tears
every time you don't want to be dragged off to meet its family.
Look, I love the woman dearly, but come <I>on</I>. When was the last
time <I>you</I> tried first-person fucking?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Seventy-four,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're kidding.&quot; I'd have guessed <I>never</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did some third-world medical missionary work between gigs.
They still bump and grind in Texas.&quot; Pag swigged his trope.
&quot;Actually, I thought it was alright.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The novelty wears off.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Evidently.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And it's not like I'm doing anything unusual here, Pag. <I>She's</I>
the one with the kink. And it's not just the sex. She keeps <I>asking</I>
about—she keeps wanting to <I>know</I> things.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Irrelevant stuff. My life as a kid. My family. Nobody's
fucking business.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She's just taking an interest. Not everyone considers
childhood memories off-limits, you know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Thanks for the insight.&quot; As if people had never <I>taken
an interest</I> before. As if Helen hadn't <I>taken an interest</I>
when she went through my drawers and filtered my mail and followed me
from room to room, asking the drapes and the furniture why I was
always so sullen and withdrawn. She'd taken such an interest that
she wouldn't let me out the door until I confided in her. At twelve
I'd been stupid enough to throw myself on her mercy, <I>It's
personal, Mom. I'd just rather not talk about it.</I> Then I'd
made my escape into the bathroom when she demanded to know if <I>it
</I>was trouble online, trouble at school, was it a girl, was it a—a
<I>boy</I>, what <I>was</I> it and why couldn't I just <I>trust</I>
my <I>own mother</I>, don't I know I can trust her with <I>anything</I>?
I waited out the persistent knocking and the insistent concerned
voice through the door and the final, grudging silence that followed.
I waited until I was absolutely sure she'd gone away, I waited for
five fucking <I>hours</I> before I came out and there she was, arms
folded in the hall, eyes brimming with reproach and disappointment.
That night she took the lock off the bathroom door because <I>family
should never shut each other out</I>. Still taking an interest.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri,&quot; Pag said quietly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I slowed my breathing, tried again: &quot;She doesn't just want to
<I>talk</I> about family. She wants to <I>meet</I> them. She keeps
trying to drag me to meet <I>hers</I>. I thought I was hooking up
with <I>Chelsea</I>, you know, nobody ever told me I'd have to share
airspace with...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You do it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Once.&quot; Reaching, grasping things, feigning acceptance,
feigning <I>friendship</I>. &quot;It was great, if you like being
ritually pawed by a bunch of play-acting strangers who can't stand
the sight of you and don't have the guts to admit it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag shrugged, unsympathetic. &quot;Sounds like typical old-school
family. You're a synthesist, man. You deal with way wonkier
dynamics than <I>that</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I deal with <I>other people's</I> information. I don't vomit
my own personal life into the public sphere. Whatever hybrids and
the constructs I work with, they don't—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>touch—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Interrogate,&quot; I finished.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You knew Chelse was an old-fashioned girl right off the top.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, when it suits her.&quot; I gulped ale. &quot;But she's
cutting-edge when she's got a splicer in her hand. Which isn't to
say that her strategies couldn't use some work.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Strategies.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>It's not a </I>strategy<I>, for God's sake! Can't you see I'm
</I>hurting<I>? I'm on the fucking </I>floor<I>, Siri, I'm curled up
in a ball because I'm hurting so much and all you can do is criticize
my </I>tactics<I>? What do I have to do, slash my goddamn </I>wrists?
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd shrugged and turned away. <I>Nature's trick</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She <I>cries</I>,&quot; I said now. &quot;High blood-lactate
levels, makes it easy for her. It's just chemistry but she holds it
up like it was some kind of IOU.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag pursed his lips. &quot;Doesn't mean it's an act.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Everything's an act. Everything's strategy. You know that.&quot;
I snorted. &quot;And <I>she's</I> miffed because <I>I</I> base a
skin on her?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think it's so much the actual skin as the fact that you
didn't tell her. You know how she feels about honesty in
relationships.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sure. She doesn't want any.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Give me some credit, Pag. You think I should tell her that
sometimes the sight of her makes me shudder?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The system called Robert Paglino sat quietly, and sipped his drugs,
and set the things he was about to say in order. He took a breath.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can't believe you could be so fucking dumb,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah? Enlighten me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of <I>course</I> she wants you to tell her you only have eyes
for her, you love her pores and her morning breath, and why stop at
one tweak how about ten. But that doesn't mean she wants you to <I>lie</I>,
you idiot. She wants all that stuff to be <I>true</I>. And—well,
why <I>can't</I> it be?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It isn't,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Jesus</I>, Siri. People aren't <I>rational</I>. <I>You</I>
aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're—we're
feeling machines that happen to think.&quot; He took a breath, and
another hit. &quot;And you already know that, or you couldn't do
your job. Or at least—&quot; He grimaced— &quot;the
system knows.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The system.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Me and my protocols, he meant. My <I>Chinese Room</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I took a breath. &quot;It doesn't work with everyone, you know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So I've noticed. Can't read systems you're too entangled with,
right? Observer effect.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just as well,&quot; he said. &quot;I don't think I'd like you
all that much in that <I>room</I> of yours.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It came out before I could stop it: &quot;Chelse says she'd prefer a
<I>real</I> one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He raised his eyebrows. &quot;Real what?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Chinese Room. She says it would have better comprehension.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Qube murmured and clattered around us for a few moments.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can see why she'd say that,&quot; Pag said at last. &quot;But
you— you did okay, Pod-man.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I dunno.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded, emphatic. &quot;You know what they say about the road
less traveled? Well, you carved your <I>own</I> road. I don't know
why. It's like learning calligraphy using your toes, you know? Or
proprioceptive polyneuropathy. It's amazing you can do it at all;
it's <I>mindboggling</I> that you actually got <I>good</I> at it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I squinted at him. &quot;Proprio—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There used to be people without any sense of—well, of
themselves, physically. They couldn't feel their bodies in space,
had no idea how their own limbs were arranged or even if they <I>had</I>
limbs. Some of them said they felt <I>pithed</I>. Disembodied.
They'd send a motor signal to the hand and just have to take it on
faith that it arrived. So they'd use vision to compensate; they
couldn't feel where the hand was so they'd <I>look </I>at it while it
moved, use sight as a substitute for the normal force-feedback you
and I take for granted. They could walk, if they kept their eyes
focused on their legs and concentrated on every step. They'd get
pretty good at it. But even after years of practice, if you
distracted them in mid-step they'd go over like a beanstalk without a
counterweight.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're saying I'm like that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You use your <I>Chinese room</I> the way they used vision.
You've reinvented empathy, almost from scratch, and in some ways—not
<I>all</I> obviously, or I wouldn't have to tell you this—but
in some ways yours is better than the original. It's why you're so
good at synthesis.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shook my head. &quot;I just observe, that's all. I watch what
people do, and then I imagine what would make them do that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sounds like empathy to me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not. Empathy's not so much about imagining how the other
guy feels. It's more about imagining how <I>you'd</I> feel in the
same place, right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pag frowned. &quot;So?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what if you don't <I>know</I> how you'd feel?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked at me, and his surfaces were serious and completely
transparent. &quot;You're better than that, friend. You may not
always act like it, but—I know you. I knew you <I>before</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You knew someone else. I'm <I>Pod-man</I>, remember?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, that was someone else. And maybe I remember him better
than you do. But I'll tell you one thing.&quot; He leaned forward.
&quot;<I>Both</I> of you would've helped me out that day. And maybe
he would've got there with good ol'-fashioned empathy while you had
to cobble together some kind of improvised flowchart out of surplus
parts, but that just makes your accomplishment all the greater.
Which is why I continue to stick it out with you, old buddy. Even
though you have a rod up your ass the size of the Rio Spire.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He held out his glass. Dutifully, I clinked it against my own. We
drank.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't remember him,&quot; I said after a while.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, the other Siri? Pre-Pod Siri?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nothing at all?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought back. &quot;Well, he was wracked by convulsions all the
time, right? There'd be constant pain. I don't remember any pain.&quot;
My glass was almost empty; I sipped to make it last. &quot;I—I
dream about him sometimes, though. About— <I>being</I> him.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's it like?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was—colorful. Everything was more saturated, you
know? Sounds, smells. Richer than life.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And now?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked at him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You said it <I>was</I> colorful. What changed?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know. Maybe nothing. I just— I don't actually
remember the dreams when I wake up any more.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So how do you know you still have them?&quot; Pag asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Fuck it</I> I thought, and tipped back the last of my pint in a
single gulp. &quot;I know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I frowned, taken aback. I had to think for a few moments before I
remembered.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I wake up smiling,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Grunts
look the enemy in the eye. Grunts know the stakes. Grunts know the
price of poor strategy. What do the generals know? Overlays and
Tactical plots. The whole chain of command is upside-down.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Kenneth
Lubin, Zero Sum</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It went bad from the moment we breached. The plan had called for
precise havoc along the new beachhead, subtly arranged to entrap some
blood-cell-with-waldoes as it sought to repair the damage. Our job
had been to set the trap and stand back, trusting Sarasti's
assurances that we would not have long to wait.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We had no time at all. Something squirmed in the swirling dust the
moment we breached, serpentine movement down the hole that instantly
kicked Bates renowned <I>field initiative</I> into high gear. Her
grunts dived through and caught a scrambler twitching in their
crosshairs, clinging to the wall of the passageway. It must have
been stunned by the blast of our entry, a classic case of
wrong-place-wrong-time. Bates took a split-second to appraise the
opportunity and the plan was plasma.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One of the grunts plugged the scrambler with a biopsy dart before I
even had a chance to blink. We would have bagged the whole animal
right then if <I>Rorschach</I>'s<I> </I>magnetosphere hadn't chosen
that moment to kick sand in our faces. As it was, by the time our
grunts staggered back into action their quarry was already
disappearing around the bend. Bates was tethered to her troops; they
yanked her down the rabbit hole (&quot;<I>Set it up!</I>&quot; she
yelled back at Sascha) the moment she let them loose.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was tethered to Bates. I barely had a chance to exchange a
wide-eyed look with Sascha before being yanked away in turn.
Suddenly I was <I>inside</I> again; the sated biopsy dart bounced off
my faceplate and flashed past, still attached to a few meters of
discarded monofilament. Hopefully Sascha would pick it up while
Bates and I were hunting; at least the mission wouldn't be a total
loss if we never made it back.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The grunts dragged us like bait on a hook. Bates flew like a dolphin
just ahead of me, keeping effortlessly to the center of the bore with
an occasional tweak of her jets. I careened off the walls just
behind, trying to stabilize myself, trying to look as though I too
might be in control. It was an important pretense. The whole point
of being a decoy is to pass yourself off as an original. They'd even
given me my own gun, pure precaution of course, more for comfort
than protection. It hugged my forearm and fired plastic slugs
impervious to induction fields.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Just Bates and I, now. A pacifist soldier, and the odds of a coin
toss.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Gooseflesh prickled my skin as it always had. The usual ghosts
scrabbled and clawed through my mind. This time, though, the dread
seemed muted. Distant. Perhaps it was just a matter of timing,
perhaps we were moving so quickly through the magnetic landscape that
no one phantom had a chance to stick. Or maybe it was something
else. Maybe I wasn't so afraid of ghosts because this time we were
after monsters<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The scrambler seemed to have thrown off whatever cobwebs our entrance
had spun; it surged along the walls now at full speed, its arms
shooting ahead like a succession of striking snakes, slinging the
body forward so fast the drones could barely keep it in sight, a
writhing silhouette in the fog. Suddenly it leapt sideways, sailing
across the width of the passageway and down some minor tributary.
The grunts veered in pursuit, crashing into walls, stumbling—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—stopping—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and suddenly Bates was braking hard, shooting back past me as
I flailed with my pistol. I was past the drones in the next instant;
my leash snapped tight and snapped back, bringing me to a dead
drifting stop. For a second or two I was on the front line. For a
second or two I <I>was</I> the front line, Siri Keeton, note taker,
mole, professional uncomprehender. I just floated there, breath
roaring in my helmet, as a few meters further on the walls—
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Squirmed...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Peristalsis</I>, I thought at first. But this motion was utterly
unlike the slow, undulating waves that usually rippled along
<I>Rorschach</I>'s passageways. So <I>hallucination</I>, I thought
instead— and then those writhing walls reached out with a
thousand whiplike calcareous tongues that grabbed our quarry from
every direction and <I>tore it to pieces</I>...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something grabbed me and spun me around. Suddenly I was locked
against the chest of one of the grunts, its rear guns firing as we
retreated back up the tunnel at full speed. Bates was in the arms of
the other. Seething motion receded behind us but the image stayed
stuck to the backs of my eyes, hallucinatory and point-blank in its
clarity:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Scramblers, everywhere. A seething infestation squirming across the
walls, reaching out for the intruder, leaping into the lumen of the
passageway to press their counterattack.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not against us. They had attacked one of their own. I'd seen three
of its arms ripped off before it had disappeared into a writhing ball
in the center of the passageway.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We fled. I turned to Bates—<I>Did you see</I>—but held
my tongue. The deathly concentration on her face was unmistakable
even across two faceplates and three meters of methane. According to
HUD she'd lobotomized both grunts, bypassed all that wonderful
autonomous decision-making circuitry entirely. She was running both
machines herself, as manually as marionettes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Grainy turbulent echoes appeared on the rear sonar display. The
scramblers had finished with their sacrifice. Now they were coming
after us. My grunt stumbled and careened against the side of the
passage. Jagged shards of alien décor dug parallel gouges
across my faceplate, tenderized chunks of thigh through the shielded
fabric of my suit. I clenched down on a cry. It got out anyway.
Some ridiculous in-suit alarm chirped indignantly an instant before a
dozen rotten eggs broke open inside my helmet. I coughed. My eyes
stung and watered in the reek; I could barely see <I>Seiverts</I> on
the HUD, flashing instantly into the red.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates drove us on without a word.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My faceplate healed enough to shut off the alarm. My air began to
clear. The scramblers had gained; by the time I could see clearly
again they were only a few meters behind us. Up ahead Sascha came
into view around the bend, Sascha who had no backup, whose other
cores had all been shut down on Sarasti's orders. Susan had
protested at first—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If there's any opportunity to communicate—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There won't be,&quot; he'd said.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—so there was Sascha who was <I>more resistant to Rorschach</I>'s
<I>influence</I> according to some criterion I never understood,
curled up in a fetal ball with her gloves clamped against her helmet
and I could only hope to some dusty deity that she'd set the trap
before this place had got to her. And here came the scramblers, and
Bates was shouting &quot;<I>Sascha! Get out of the fucking way!</I>&quot;
and braking hard, way too soon, the scrambling horde nipping at our
heels like a riptide and Bates yelled &quot;<I>Sascha</I>!&quot;
again and finally Sascha moved, kicked herself into gear and off the
nearest wall and fled right back up the hole we'd blown in through.
Bates yanked some joystick in her head and our warrior sedans slewed
and shat sparks and bullets and dove out after her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha had set the trap just within the mouth of the breach. Bates
armed it in passing with the slap of one gloved hand. Motion sensors
were supposed to do the rest— but the enemy was close behind,
and there was no room to spare.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It went off just as I was emerging into the vestibule. The cannon
net shot out behind me in a glorious exploding conic, caught
something, snapped back up the rabbit hole and slammed into my grunt
from behind. The recoil kicked us against the top of the vestibule
so hard I thought the fabric would tear. It held, and threw us back
against the squirming things enmeshed in our midst.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Writhing backbones everywhere. Articulated arms, lashing like bony
whips. One of them entwined my leg and <I>squeezed</I> like a brick
python. Bates' hands waved in a frantic dance before me and that arm
came apart into dismembered segments, bouncing around the enclosure.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This was all wrong. They were supposed to be in the net, they were
supposed to be <I>contained</I>...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Sascha! Launch!</I>&quot; Bates barked. Another arm
separated from its body and careened into the wall, coiling and
uncoiling.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The hole had flooded with aerosol foam-core as soon as we'd pulled
the net. A scrambler writhed half-embedded in that matrix, caught
just a split-second too late; its central mass protruded like some
great round tumor writhing with monstrous worms.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>SASCHA!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Artillery. The floor of the vestibule irised shut quick as a
leg-hold trap and everything slammed against it, grunts, people,
scramblers whole and in pieces. I couldn't breathe. Every
thimbleful of flesh weighed a hundred kilograms. Something slapped
us to one side, a giant hand batting an insect. Maybe a course
correction. Maybe a collision.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But ten seconds later we were weightless again, and nothing had torn
us open.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We floated like mites in a ping-pong ball, surrounded by a confusion
of machinery and twitching body parts. There was little of anything
that might pass for blood. What there was floated in clear,
shuddering spherules. The cannon net floated like a shrink-wrapped
asteroid in our midst. The things inside had wrapped their arms
around themselves, around each other, curled into a shivering and
unresponsive ball. Compressed methonia hissed around them, keeping
them fresh for the long trip home.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Holy <I>shit</I>,&quot; Sascha breathed, watching them. &quot;The
bloodsucker called it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He hadn't called everything. He hadn't called a mob of multiarmed
aliens ripping one of their own to pieces before my eyes. He hadn't
seen <I>that</I> coming.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Or at least, he hadn't mentioned it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was already feeling nauseous. Bates was carefully bringing her
wrists together. For a moment I could barely make out a taut dark
thread of freakwire, fine as smoke, between them. Her caution was
well-advised; that stuff would slice through human limbs as easily as
alien ones. One of the grunts groomed its mouthparts at her
shoulder, cleaning gore from its mandibles.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The freakwire vanished from my sight. Sight itself was dimming, now.
The inside of this great lead balloon was going dark around me. We
were coasting, purely ballistic. We had to trust that <I>Scylla
</I>would swoop in and snatch us once we'd achieved a discreet
distance from the scene of the crime. We had to trust Sarasti.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was getting harder by the hour. But he'd been right so far.
Mostly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you <I>know</I>?&quot; Bates had asked when he'd first
laid out the plan. He hadn't answered. Chances are he couldn't
have, not to us, any more than a baseline could have explained brane
theory to the inhabitants of Flatland. But Bates hadn't been asking
about tactics anyway, not really. Maybe she'd been asking for a
<I>reason</I>, for something to justify this ongoing trespass into
foreign soil, the capture and slaughter of its natives.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On one level she already knew the reason, of course. We all did. We
could not afford to merely react. The risks were too great; we had
to <I>preempt</I>. Sarasti, wise beyond all of us, saw this more
clearly than we. Amanda Bates knew he was right in her mind—but
perhaps she didn't feel it in her gut. Perhaps, I thought as my
vision failed, she was asking Sarasti to convince her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But that wasn't all she was doing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you are Amanda Bates.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The control you wield over your troops would give wet dreams and
nightmares to generals of ages past. You can drop instantly into the
sensorium of anyone under your command, experience the battlefield
from any number of first-person perspectives. Your every soldier is
loyal unto death, asking no questions, obeying all commands with
alacrity and dedication to which mere flesh could never even aspire.
You don't just respect a chain of command: you <I>are</I> one.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You are a little bit scared of your own power. You are a little bit
scared of the things you've already done with it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Taking orders comes as naturally as giving them. Oh, you've been
known to question policy on occasion, or seek a bigger picture than
may be strictly necessary for the job at hand. Your <I>command
initiative </I>has become the stuff of legends. But you have never
disobeyed a direct order. When asked for your perspective, you
serve it straight up and unvarnished— until the decision is
made, and the orders handed down. Then you do your job without
question. Even when questions arise, you would hardly waste time
asking them unless you expected an answer you could use.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Why, then, demand analytical details from a <I>vampire</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not for information. Might as well expect the sighted to explain
vision to the congenitally blind. Not for clarification; there was
no ambiguity in Sarasti's bottom line. Not even for the benefit of
poor dumb Siri Keeton, who may have missed some salient point but is
too ashamed to raise his own hand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No, there is only one reason why you might ask for such details: to
<I>challenge</I>. To rebel, to the infinitesimal degree that
rebellion is permitted once the word is given.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You argued and advocated as forcefully as you could, back when
Sarasti was soliciting input. But he ignored yours, abandoned any
attempt at communication and preemptively invaded foreign territory.
He knew that <I>Rorschach</I> might contain living beings and still
he tore it open without regard for their welfare. He may have killed
helpless innocents. He may have roused an angry giant. You don't
know.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
All you know is, you've been helping him do it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You've seen this kind of arrogance before, among your own kind. You
had hoped that smarter creatures would be wiser ones. Bad enough to
see such arrogant stupidity inflicted on the helpless, but to do it
at these stakes beggars belief. Killing innocents is the <I>least</I>
of the risks you're running; you're gambling with the fate of worlds,
provoking conflict with a star faring technology whose sole offense
was to take your picture without permission.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Your dissent has changed nothing. So you rein it in; all that slips
out now is the occasional pointless question with no hope of an
answer, its inherent insubordination so deeply buried you don't even
see it yourself. If you did see it, you'd keep your mouth shut
entirely—because the last thing you want is to remind Sarasti
that you think he's <I>wrong</I>. You don't want him dwelling on
that. You don't want him to think you're up to something.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because you are. Even if you're not quite ready to admit it to
yourself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Amanda Bates is beginning to contemplate a change of command.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The laceration of my suit had done a real number on the gears. It
took three solid days for <I>Theseus</I> to bring me back to life.
But death was no excuse for falling behind the curve; I resurrected
with a head full of updates clogging my inlays.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I flipped through them, climbing down into the drum. The Gang of
Four sat at the galley below me, staring at untouched portions of
nutritionally-balanced sludge on her plate. Cunningham, over in his
inherited domain, grunted at my appearance and turned back to work,
the fingers of one hand tapping compulsively on the desktop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I>' orbit had widened during my absence, and most of its
eccentricities had been planed away. Now we kept our target in view
from a more-or-less constant range of three thousand kilometers. Our
orbital period lagged <I>Rorschach</I>'s by an hour—the alien
crept implacably ahead of us along its lower trajectory—but a
supplementary burn every couple of weeks would be enough to keep it
in sight. We had <I>specimens </I>now, things to be examined under
conditions of our own choosing; no point in risking any more close
approaches until we'd wrung every useful datum from what we had.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham had expanded his lab space during my time in the
sepulcher. He'd built holding pens, one for each scrambler, modules
partitioned by a common wall and installed in a whole new hab. The
microwaved carcass had been sidelined like a discarded toy from a
previous birthday, although according to the access logs Cunningham
still visited it every now and then.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not that he visited <I>any</I> part of the new wing in person, of
course. Not that he was even able to, not without suiting up and
jumping across the hold. The whole compartment had been disconnected
from its spinal lock and pushed to a tethered anchorage midway
between spine and carapace: Sarasti's orders, given to <I>minimize
risk of contamination</I>. It was no skin off Cunningham's nose. He
was happier leaving his body in pseudogravity anyway, while his
consciousness flitted between the waldoes and sensors and bric-a-brac
surrounding his new pets.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> saw me coming and pushed a squeezebulb of sugary
electrolytes from the galley dispenser. The Gang didn't look up as I
passed. One forefinger tapped absently against their temple, the
lips pursed and twitched in the characteristic mode that said
<I>internal dialog in progress</I>. I could never tell who was on
top when they were like that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I sucked on the squeezebulb and looked in on the pens. Two cubes
suffused in pale red light: in one a scrambler floated center stage,
waving its segmented arms like seaweed in gentle surge. The occupant
of the other cage was squeezed into a corner, four arms splayed
across the converging walls; four others extended, waving again, into
open space. The bodies from which those arms sprouted were
spheroids, not flattened disks as our first—sample had been.
They were only slightly compressed, and their arms sprouted not from
a single equatorial band but from across the whole surface.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fully-extended, the floating scrambler was over two meters across.
The other seemed roughly the same size. Neither moved, except for
those drifting arms. Navy-blue mosaics, almost black in the
longwave, rippled across their surfaces like the patterns of wind on
grass. Superimposed graphics plotted methane and hydrogen at
reassuring <I>Rorschach</I> norms. Temperature and lighting, ditto.
An icon for ambient electromagnetics remained dark.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I dipped into the archives, watched the arrival of the aliens from
two days past; each tumbling unceremoniously into its pen, balled up,
hugging themselves as they bounced gently around their enclosures.
<I>Fetal position</I>, I thought—but after a few moments the
arms uncoiled, like the blooming of calcareous flowers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Robert says <I>Rorschach</I> grows them,&quot; Susan James
said behind me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned. Definitely James in there, but—muted, somehow. Her
meal remained untouched. Her surfaces were dim.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except for the eyes. Those were deep, and a little hollow.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Grows?&quot; I repeated.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;In stacks. They have two navels each.&quot; She managed a
weak smile, touched her belly with one hand and the small of her back
with the other. &quot;One in front, one behind. He thinks they
grow in a kind of column, piled up. When the top one develops to a
certain point, it buds off from the stack and becomes free-living.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The archived scramblers were exploring their new environment now,
climbing gingerly along the walls, unrolling their arms along the
corners where the panels met. Those swollen central bodies struck me
again. &quot;So that first one, with the flattened...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Juvenile,&quot; she agreed. &quot;Fresh off the stack. These
ones are older. They, they plump out as they mature. Robert says,&quot;
she added after a moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I sucked the dregs from my squeezebulb. &quot;The ship grows its own
crew.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If it's a ship.&quot; James shrugged. &quot;If they're crew.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I watched them move. There wasn't much to explore; the walls were
almost bare, innocent of anything but a few sensor heads and gas
nozzles. The pens had their own tentacles and manipulators for more
invasive research needs, but those had been carefully sheathed during
introduction. Still, the creatures covered the territory in careful
increments, moving back and forth along parallel, invisible paths.
Almost as if they were running transects.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James had noticed it too. &quot;It seems awfully systematic, doesn't
it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What does Robert say about that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He says the behavior of honeybees and sphex wasps is just as
complex, and it's all rote hardwiring. Not intelligence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But bees still <I>communicate</I>, right? They do that dance,
to tell the hive where the flowers are.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shrugged, conceding the point.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you still might be able to talk to these things.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe. You'd think.&quot; She massaged her brow between thumb
and forefinger. &quot;We haven't got anywhere, though. We played
some of their pigment patterns back to them, with variations. They
don't seem to make sounds. Robert synthesized a bunch of noises that
they might squeeze out of their cloacae if they were so inclined, but
those didn't get us anywhere either. Harmonic farts, really.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we're sticking to the blood-cells-with-waldoes model.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Pretty much. But you know, they didn't go into a loop.
Hardwired animals repeat themselves. Even smart ones pace, or chew
their fur. Stereotyped behaviors. But these two, they gave
everything a very careful once-over and then just—shut down.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They were still at it in ConSensus, slithering across one wall, then
another, then another, a slow screw-thread track that would leave no
square centimeter uncovered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Have they done anything since?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shrugged again. &quot;Nothing spectacular. They squirm when you
poke them. Wave their arms back and forth—they do that pretty
much constantly, but there's no information in it that we can tell.
They haven't gone invisible on us or anything. We blanked the
adjoining wall for a while so they could see each other, even piped
audio and air feeds—Robert thought there might be some kind of
pheromonal communication—but nothing. They didn't even react
to each other.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Have you tried, well, <I>motivating</I> them?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;With what, Siri? They don't seem to care about their own
company. We can't bribe them with food unless we know what they eat,
which we don't. Robert says they're in no immediate danger of
starvation anyway. Maybe when they get hungry they can deal.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I killed the archival feed and reverted to realtime. &quot;Maybe
they eat—I don't know, radiation. Or magnetic energy. The
cage can generate magnetic fields, right?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Tried it.&quot; She took a breath, then squared her shoulders.
&quot;But I guess these things take time. He's only had a couple of
days, and I only got out of the crypt myself a day ago. We'll keep
trying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What about negative reinforcement?&quot; I wondered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She blinked. &quot;Hurt them, you mean.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not necessarily anything extreme. And if they're not sentient
anyway...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Just like that, Susan went away. &quot;Why, Keeton. you just made a
<I>suggestion</I>. You giving up on this whole <I>noninterference</I>
thing?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hello, Sascha. No, of course not. Just—making a list of
what's been tried.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Good.&quot; There was an edge to her voice. &quot;Hate to
think you were slipping. We're going to grab some down time now, so
maybe you could go and talk to Cunningham for a bit. Yeah, do that.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And be sure to tell him your theory about radiation-eating
aliens. I bet he could use a laugh.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He stood at his post in BioMed, though his empty chair was barely a
meter away. The ubiquitous cigarette hung from between the fingers
of one hand, burned down and burned out. His other hand played with
itself, fingers tapping against thumb in sequence, little to index,
index to little. Windows crawled with intelligence in front of him;
he wasn't watching.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I approached from behind. I watched his surfaces in motion. I heard
the soft syllables rising from his throat:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Yit-barah v'yish-tabah v'yit-pa-ar v'yit-romam...</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not his usual litany. Not even his usual language; Hebrew,
ConSensus said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It sounded almost like a <I>prayer</I>...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He must have heard me. His topology went flat and hard and almost
impossible to decipher. It was increasingly difficult getting a fix
on anyone these days, but even through those topological cataracts
Cunningham— as always— was a tougher read than most.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Keeton,&quot; he said without turning.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're not Jewish,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>It</I> was.&quot; <I>Szpindel</I>, I realized after a
moment. Cunningham didn't do gender pronouns.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Isaac Szpindel had been an atheist. All of us were. We'd all
started out that way, at least.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I didn't know you knew him,&quot; I said. It certainly wasn't
policy.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham sank into his chair without looking at me. In his head,
and in mine, a new window opened within a frame marked
<I>Electrophoresis</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried again. &quot;I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intru—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What can I do for you, Siri?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I was hoping you could bring me up to speed on your findings.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A periodic chart of alien elements scrolled through the feed.
Cunningham logged it and started another sample. &quot;I've
documented everything. It's all in ConSensus.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I made a play for ego: &quot;It would really help to know how <I>you'd</I>
thumbnail it, though. What you think is important can be just as
vital as the data themselves.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked at me a moment. He muttered something, repetitive and
irrelevant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's important is what's <I>missing</I>,&quot; he said after
a moment. &quot;I've got good samples now and I still can't find the
genes. Protein synthesis is almost prionic—reconformation
instead of the usual transcription pathways—but I can't figure
out how those bricks get slotted into the wall once they're made.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Any progress on the energy front?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Energy?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Aerobic metabolism on an anaerobe budget, remember? You said
they had too much ATP.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That I solved.&quot; He puffed smoke; far to stern a fleck of
alien tissue liquefied and banded into chemical strata. &quot;They're
sprinting.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rotate </I>that<I> if you can</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't. &quot;How do you mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He sighed. &quot;Biochemistry is a tradeoff. The faster you
synthesize ATP, the more expensive each molecule becomes. It turns
out scramblers are a lot more energy-efficient at making it than we
are. They're just extremely slow at it, which might not be a big
drawback for something that spends most of its time inactive.
<I>Rorschach—</I>whatever <I>Rorschach</I> started out as—
could have drifted for millennia before it washed up here. That's a
lot of time to build up an energy reserve for bouts of high activity,
and once you've laid the groundwork glycolysis is <I>explosive</I>.
Two-thousand-fold boost, and no oxygen demand.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Scramblers <I>sprint</I>. Their whole lives.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They may come preloaded with ATP and burn it off throughout
their lifespan.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How long would that be?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Good question,&quot; he admitted. &quot;Live fast, die young.
If they ration it out, stay dormant most of the time—who
knows?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Huh.&quot; The free-floating scrambler had drifted away from
the center of its pen. One extended arm held a wall at bay; the
others continued their hypnotic swaying.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I remembered other arms, their motion not so gentle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Amanda and I chased one into a crowd. It—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham was back at his samples. &quot;I saw the record.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They tore it to pieces.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Uh huh.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Any idea why?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He shrugged. &quot;Bates thought there might be some kind of civil
war going on down there.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do you think?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know. Maybe it's right, or maybe scramblers are ritual
cannibals, or—they're <I>aliens</I>, Keeton. What do you want
from me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But they're not <I>really</I> aliens. At least not intelligent
ones. <I>War</I> implies intelligence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ants wage war all the time. Proves nothing except that they're
alive.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are <I>scramblers</I> even alive?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What kind of question is that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You think <I>Rorschach</I> grows them on some kind of assembly
line. You can't find any genes. Maybe they're just biomechanical
machines.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's what life <I>is</I>, Keeton. That's what <I>you</I>
are.&quot; Another hit of nicotine, another storm of numbers, another
sample. &quot;Life isn't either/or. It's a matter of degree.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What I'm asking is, are they <I>natural</I>? Could they be
constructs?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Is a termite mound a construct? Beaver dam? Space ship? Of
course. Were they built by naturally-evolved organisms, acting
naturally? They were. So tell me how anything in the whole deep
multiverse can ever be anything <I>but </I>natural?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. &quot;You know what
I mean.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's a meaningless question. Get your head out of the
Twentieth Century.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I gave up. After a few seconds Cunningham seemed to notice the
silence. He withdrew his consciousness from the machinery and looked
around with fleshly eyes, as if searching for some mosquito that had
mysteriously stopped whining.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's your problem with me?&quot; I asked. Stupid question,
obvious question. Unworthy of any synthesist to be so, so <I>direct</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His eyes glittered in that dead face. &quot;Processing without
comprehension. That's what you do, isn't it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's a colossal oversimplification.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mmm.&quot; Cunningham nodded. &quot;Then why can't you seem
to <I>comprehend</I> how pointless it is to keep peeking over our
shoulders and writing home to our masters?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Someone has to keep Earth in the loop.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Seven months each way. Long loop.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Still.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're on our own out here, Keeton. <I>You're</I> on your own.
The game's going to be long over before our masters even know it's
started.&quot; He sucked smoke. &quot;Or perhaps not. Perhaps
you're talking to someone closer, hmm? That it? Is the Fourth Wave
telling you what to do?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There is no Fourth Wave. Not that anyone's told me, anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably not. They'd never risk <I>their</I> lives out here,
would they? Too dangerous even to hang back and watch from a
distance. That's why they built <I>us</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We're all self-made. Nobody forced you to get the rewire.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, nobody <I>forced</I> me to get the rewire. I could have
just let them cut out my brain and pack it into Heaven, couldn't I?
That's the <I>choice</I> we have. We can be utterly useless, or we
can try and compete against the vampires and the constructs and the
AIs. And perhaps <I>you</I> could tell me how to do that without
turning into a—an utter freak.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So much in the voice. Nothing at all on the face. I said nothing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;See what I mean? No comprehension.&quot; He managed a tight
smile. &quot;So I'll answer your questions. I'll delay my own work
and hold your hand because Sarasti's told us to. I guess that
superior vampire mind sees some legitimate reason to indulge your
constant ankle-nipping, and it's in charge so I'll play along. But
I'm not nearly that smart, so you'll forgive me if it all seems a bit
naff.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm just—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're just doing your job. I know. But I don't like being
<I>played</I>, Keeton. And that's what your job <I>is</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Even back on Earth, Robert Cunningham had barely disguised his
opinion of the ship's <I>commissar</I>. It had been obvious even to
the topologically blind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd always had a hard time imagining the man. It wasn't just his
expressionless face. Sometimes, not even the subtler things behind
would show up in his topology. Perhaps he repressed them
deliberately, resenting the presence of this mole among the crew.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It would hardly have been the first time I'd encountered such a
reaction. Everyone resented me to some extent. Oh, they liked me
well enough, or thought they did. They tolerated my intrusions, and
cooperated, and gave away far more than they thought they did.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But beneath Szpindel's gruff camaraderie, beneath James's patient
explanations—there was no real respect. How could there be?
These people were the bleeding edge, the incandescent apex of hominid
achievement. They were trusted with the fate of the world. I was
just a tattletale for small minds back home. Not even that much,
when home receded too deeply into the distance. Superfluous mass.
Couldn't be helped. No use getting bothered over it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Still, Szpindel had only coined <I>commissar</I> half-jokingly.
Cunningham <I>believed</I> it, and didn't laugh. And while I'd
encountered many others like him over the years, those had only <I>tried</I>
to hide themselves from sight. Cunningham was the first who seemed
to succeed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to build the relationship all the way through training, tried
to find the missing pieces. I watched him working the simulator's
teleops one day, exercising the shiny new interfaces that spread him
through walls and wires. He was practicing his surgical skills on
some hypothetical alien the computer had conjured up to test his
technique. Sensors and jointed teleops sprouted like the legs of an
enormous spider crab from an overhead mount. Spirit-possessed, they
dipped and weaved around some semiplausible holographic creature.
Cunningham's own body merely trembled slightly, a cigarette jiggling
at the corner of its mouth.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I waited for him to take a break. Eventually the tension ebbed from
his shoulders. His vicarious limbs relaxed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So.&quot; I tapped my temple. &quot;Why'd <I>you</I> do it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He didn't turn. Above the dissection, sensors swiveled and stared
back like dismembered eyestalks. <I>That</I> was the center of
Cunningham's awareness right now, not this nicotine-stained body in
front of me. <I>Those </I>were his eyes, or his tongue, or whatever
unimaginable bastard-senses he used to parse what the machines sent
him. Those clusters aimed back at me, at <I>us</I>—and if
Robert Cunningham still possessed anything that might be called
vision, he was watching himself from eyes two meters outside his own
skull.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do what, exactly?&quot; he said at last. &quot;The
enhancements?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Enhancements</I>. As though he'd upgraded his wardrobe instead of
ripping out his senses and grafting new ones into the wounds.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's vital to keep current,&quot; he said. &quot;If you don't
reconfigure you can't retrain. If you don’t retrain you're
obsolete inside a month, and then you're not much good for anything
except Heaven or dictation.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I ignored the jibe. &quot;Pretty radical transformation, though.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not these days.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Didn't it <I>change</I> you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His body dragged on the cigarette. Targeted ventilation sucked away
the smoke before it reached me. &quot;That's the whole point.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Surely you were affected personally, though. Surely—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah.&quot; He nodded; at the far end of shared motor nerves,
teleops jiggled in sympathy. &quot;Change the eyes that look at the
world, change the <I>me</I> does the looking?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Something like that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now he was watching me with fleshly eyes. Across the membrane those
snakes and eyestalks returned to their work on the virtual carcass,
as if deciding they'd wasted enough time on pointless distractions.
I wondered which body he was in now.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm surprised you'd have to ask,&quot; the meat one said.
&quot;Doesn't my body language tell you everything? Aren't
jargonauts supposed to read minds?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He was right, of course. I wasn't interested in Cunningham's <I>words</I>;
those were just the carrier wave. He couldn't hear the <I>real</I>
conversation we were having. All his angles and surfaces spoke
volumes, and although their voices were strangely fuzzed with
feedback and distortion I knew I'd be able to understand them
eventually. I only had to keep him talking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Jukka Sarasti chose that moment to wander past and surgically
trash my best-laid plans.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri's best in his field,&quot; he remarked. &quot;But not
when it gets too close to home.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Why
should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above
him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Pierre
Troubetzkoy</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The thing is,&quot; Chelsea said, &quot;this whole first-person
thing takes <I>effort</I>. You have to care enough to <I>try</I>,
you know? I've been working my ass off on this relationship, I've
been working so hard, but you just don't seem to <I>care</I>...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She thought she was breaking the news. She thought I hadn't seen it
coming, because I hadn't said anything. I'd probably seen it before
she had. I hadn't said anything because I'd been scared of giving
her an opening.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt sick to my stomach.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I care about you,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As much as you could care about anything,&quot; she admitted.
&quot;But you—I mean, sometimes you're fine, Cygnus, sometimes
you're wonderful to be around but whenever anything gets the least
bit intense you just go away and leave this, this <I>battle computer</I>
running your body and I just can't <I>deal</I> with it any more...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I stared at the butterfly on the back of her hand. Its wings flexed
and folded, lazy and iridescent. I wondered how many of those
tattoos she had; I'd seen five of them on different body parts,
albeit only one at a time. I thought about asking her, but this
didn't seem like the right moment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You can be so—so brutal sometimes,&quot; she was saying.
&quot;I know you don't mean to be, but... I don't know. Maybe I'm
your pressure-release valve, or something. Maybe you have to
submerge yourself so much on the job that everything just, just
builds up and you need some kind of punching bag. Maybe that's why
you say the things you do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She was waiting for me to say something now. &quot;I've been
honest,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah. Pathologically. Have you ever had a negative thought
that you <I>haven't</I> said out loud?&quot; Her voice trembled but
her eyes—for once— stayed dry. &quot;I guess it's as
much my fault as yours. Maybe more. I could tell you
were—disconnected, from the day we met. I guess on some level
I always saw it coming.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why even try, then? If you knew we were just going to crash
and burn like this?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, Cygnus. Aren't you the one who says that <I>everyone</I>
crashes and burns eventually? Aren't you the one who says it <I>never</I>
lasts?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Mom and Dad lasted</I>. <I>Longer than this, anyway</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I frowned, astonished that I'd even let the thought form in my head.
Chelse read the silence as a wounded one. &quot;I guess—maybe
I thought I could help, you know? Help fix whatever made you so—so
<I>angry</I> all the time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The butterfly was starting to fade. I'd never seen that happen
before.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you understand what I'm saying?&quot; she asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sure. I'm a fixer-upper.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri, you wouldn't even get a tweak when I offered. You were
so scared of being <I>manipulated</I> you wouldn't even try a basic
cascade. You're the one guy I've met who might be truly, eternally
unfixable. I dunno. Maybe that's even something to be proud of.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I opened my mouth, and closed it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She gave me a sad smile. &quot;Nothing, Siri? Nothing at all?
There was a time you always knew exactly what to say.&quot; She
looked back at some earlier version of me. &quot;Now I wonder if you
ever actually meant any of it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's not fair.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot; She pursed her lips. &quot;No, it isn't. That's
not really what I'm trying to say. I guess...it's not so much that
you don't <I>mean</I> any of it. It's more like you don't know what
any of it <I>means</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The color was gone from the wings. The butterfly was a delicate
charcoal dusting, almost motionless.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'll do it now,&quot; I said. &quot;I'll get the tweaks. If
it's that important to you. I'll do it now.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's too late, Siri. I'm used up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe she wanted me to call her back. All these words ending in
question marks, all these significant silences. Maybe she was giving
me the opportunity to plead my case, to beg for another chance.
Maybe she wanted a reason to change her mind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could have tried. <I>Please don't</I>, I could have said. <I>I'm
begging you</I>. <I>I never meant to drive you away </I>completely<I>,
just a little, just to a safer distance. Please. In thirty long
years the only time I haven't felt worthless was when we were
together</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But when I looked up again the butterfly was gone and so was she,
taking all baggage with her. She carried doubt, and guilt for having
led me on. She left believing that our incompatibility was no one's
fault, that she'd tried as hard as she could, even that <I>I</I> had
under the tragic weight of all my issues. She left, and maybe she
didn't even blame me, and I never even knew who'd made that final
decision.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was good at what I did. I was so damned good, I did it without
even meaning to.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>My God! Did you hear that!?</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan James bounced around the drum like a pronking wildebeest in the
half-gravity. I could see the whites of her eyes from ninety degrees
away. &quot;Check your feeds! Check your feeds! <I>The pens!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I checked. One scrambler afloat; the other still jammed into its
corner.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James landed at my side with a two-footed thump, wobbling for
balance. &quot;Turn the sound up!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The hissing of the air conditioners. The clank of distant machinery
echoing along the spine; <I>Theseus</I>' usual intestinal rumblings.
Nothing else.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Okay, they're not doing it now.&quot; James brought up a
splitscreen window and threw it into reverse. &quot;<I>There</I>,&quot;
she pronounced, replaying the record with the audio cranked and
filtered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In the right side of the window, the floating scrambler had drifted
so that the tip of one outstretched arm brushed against the wall that
adjoined the other pen. In the left side, the huddled scrambler
remained unmoving.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought I heard something. Just for an instant: the brief buzz of
an insect, perhaps, if the nearest insect hadn't been five trillion
kilometers away.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Replay that. Slow it down.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A buzz, definitely. A vibration.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Way</I> down.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A click train, squirted from a dolphin's forehead. Farting lips.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, let <I>me</I>.&quot; James bulled into Cunningham's
headspace and yanked the slider to the left.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Tick tick...tick...tick tick tick...tick...tick tick tick...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Dopplered down near absolute zero, it went on for almost a minute.
Total elapsed real time was about half a second.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham zoomed the splitscreen. The huddled scrambler had
remained motionless, except for the rippling of its cuticle and the
undulation of its free arms. But before I'd only seen eight arms—and
now I could make out the bony spur of a ninth peeking from behind the
central mass. A ninth arm, curled up and hidden from view, <I>tick
tick ticking</I> while another creature casually leaned against the
other side of the wall...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now, there was nothing. The floating scrambler had drifted aimlessly
back to the center of its enclosure.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James's eyes shone. &quot;We've got to check the rest of—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But <I>Theseus</I> had been watching, and was way ahead of us. It
had already searched the archives and served up the results: three
similar exchanges over two days, ranging in duration from a tenth of
a second to almost two.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're talking,&quot; James said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham shrugged, a forgotten cigarette burning down between his
fingers. &quot;So do a lot of things. And at <I>that</I> rate of
exchange they're not exactly doing calculus. You could get as much
information out of a dancing honeybee.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's nonsense and you know it, Robert.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What I <I>know</I> is that—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Honeybees don't deliberately hide what they're saying.
Honeybees don't develop whole new modes of communication configured
specifically to confound observers. That's flexible, Robert. That's
<I>intelligent</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And what if it is, hmm? Forget for a moment the inconvenient
fact that these things don't even have <I>brains</I>. I really don't
think you've thought this through.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Of course I have.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Indeed? Then what are you so happy about? Don't you know what
this means?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sudden prickling on the back of my neck. I looked around; I looked
<I>up</I>. Jukka Sarasti had appeared in the center of the drum,
eyes gleaming, teeth bared, watching us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham followed my gaze, and nodded. &quot;I'd wager <I>it</I>
does...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was no way to learn what they'd whispered across that wall. We
could recover the audio easily enough, parse every tick and tap
they'd exchanged, but you can't decipher a code without some idea of
<I>content.</I> We had patterns of sound that could have meant
anything. We had creatures whose grammar and syntax—if their
mode of communication even contained such attributes—were
unknown and perhaps unknowable. We had creatures smart enough to
talk, and smart enough to hide that fact. No matter how much we
wanted to learn, they were obviously unwilling to teach us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not without—how had I put it?— <I>negative reinforcement</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was Jukka Sarasti who made the decision. We did it on his orders,
as we did everything else. But after the word had come down—
after Sarasti had disappeared in the night and Bates had retreated
down the spine and Robert Cunningham had returned to his studies at
the back of the drum—I was the one Susan James was left with.
The first to speak the vile thought aloud, the official witness to
posterity. I was the one she looked at, and looked away from, her
surfaces hard and refractory.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And then she started.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This is how you break down the wall:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Start with two beings. They can be human if you like, but that's
hardly a prerequisite. All that matters is that they know how to
talk among themselves.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Separate them. Let them see each other, let them speak. Perhaps a
window between their cages. Perhaps an audio feed. Let them
practice the art of conversation in their own chosen way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Hurt them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It may take a while to figure out how. Some may shrink from fire,
others from toxic gas or liquid. Some creatures may be invulnerable
to blowtorches and grenades, but shriek in terror at the threat of
ultrasonic sound. You have to experiment; and when you discover just
the right stimulus, the optimum balance between <I>pain</I> and
<I>injury</I>, you must inflict it without the remorse.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You leave them an escape hatch, of course. That's the very point of
the exercise: give one of your subjects the <I>means</I> to end the
pain, but give the other the <I>information</I> required to use it.
To one you might present a single shape, while showing the other a
whole selection. The pain will stop when the being with the menu
chooses the item its partner has seen. So let the games begin.
Watch your subjects squirm. If—<I>when</I>—they trip the
off switch, you'll know at least some of the information they
exchanged; and if you record everything that passed between them,
you'll start to get some idea of how they exchanged it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
When they solve one puzzle, give them a new one. Mix things up.
Switch their roles. See how they do at circles versus squares. Try
them out on factorials and Fibonnaccis. Continue until Rosetta Stone
results.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it,
and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the
screams.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan James—congenital optimist, high priestess of the Church
of the Healing Word, was best qualified to design and execute the
protocols. Now, at her command, the scramblers writhed. They pulled
themselves around their cages in elliptical loops, desperately
seeking any small corner free of stimulus. James had piped the feed
into ConSensus, although there was no mission-critical reason for
<I>Theseus</I>' whole crew to bear witness to the interrogation.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Let them block it at their ends,&quot; she said quietly, &quot;If
they want to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For all his reluctance to accept that these were <I>beings</I>,
intelligent and aware, Cunningham had named the prisoners. <I>Stretch</I>
tended to float spread-eagled; <I>Clench </I>was the balled-up
corner-hugger. Susan, playing her own part in this perverse
role-reversal, had simply numbered them One and Two. It wasn't that
Cunningham's choices were too cheesy for her to stomach, or that she
objected to slave names on principle. She'd just fallen back on the
oldest trick in the Torturer's Handbook, the one that lets you go
home to your family after work, and play with your children, and
sleep at night: <I>never</I> humanize your victims.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It shouldn't have been such an issue when dealing with
methane-breathing medusae. I guess every little bit helped.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Biotelemetry danced across the headspace beside each alien, luminous
annotations shuddering through thin air. I had no idea what
constituted normal readings for these creatures, but I couldn't
imagine those jagged spikes passing for anything but bad news. The
creatures themselves seethed subtly with fine mosaics in blue and
gray, fluid patterns rippling across their cuticles. Perhaps it was
a reflexive reaction to the microwaves; for all we knew it was a
mating display.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
More likely they were screaming.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James killed the microwaves. In the left-hand enclosure, a yellow
square dimmed; in the right, an identical icon nested among others
had never lit.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The pigment flowed faster in the wake of the onslaught; the arms
slowed but didn't stop. They swept back and forth like listless,
skeletal eels.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Baseline exposure. Five seconds, two hundred fifty Watts.&quot;
She spoke for the record. Another affectation; <I>Theseus</I>
recorded every breath on board, every trickle of current to five
decimal places.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Repeat.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The icon lit up. More tile patterns, flash-flooding across alien
skin. But this time, neither alien moved from where it was. Their
arms continued to squirm slightly, a torqued trembling variation on
the undulation they effected at rest. The telemetry was as harsh as
ever, though.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>They learned helplessness fast enough</I>, I reflected.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I glanced at Susan. &quot;Are you going to do this all yourself?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her eyes were bright and wet as she killed the current. Clench's
icon dimmed. Stretch's remained dormant.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I cleared my throat. &quot;I mean—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Who else is going to do this, Siri? Jukka? You?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The rest of the Gang. Sascha could—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sascha?&quot; She stared at me. &quot;Siri, I <I>created
</I>them. Do you think I did that so I could <I>hide</I> behind them
when—so I could force them to do things like <I>this</I>?&quot;
She shook her head. &quot;I'm not bringing them out. Not for this.
I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She turned away from me. There were drugs she could have taken,
neuroinhibitors to wash away the guilt, short-circuit it right down
in the molecules. Sarasti had offered them up as if he were tempting
some solitary messiah in the desert. James had refused him, and
would not say why.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Repeat,&quot; she said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The current flickered on, then off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Repeat,&quot; she said again.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not a twitch.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I pointed. &quot;I see it,&quot; she said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Clench had pressed the tip of one arm against the touchpad. The icon
there glowed like a candle flame.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Six and a half minutes later they'd graduated from yellow squares to
time-lapsed four-dimensional polyhedrons. It took them as long to
distinguish between two twenty-six-faceted shifting solids—differing
by one facet in a single frame—as it took them to tell the
difference between a yellow square and a red triangle. Intricate
patterns played across their surfaces the whole time, dynamic
needlepoint mosaics flickering almost too fast to see.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Fuck</I>,&quot; James whispered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Could be splinter skills.&quot; Cunningham had joined us in
ConSensus, although his body remained halfway around BioMed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Splinter skills,&quot; she repeated dully.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Savantism. Hyperperformance at one kind of calculation doesn't
necessarily connote high intelligence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know what splinter skills are, Robert. I just think you're
wrong.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Prove it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So she gave up on geometry and told the scramblers that one plus one
equaled two. Evidently they knew that already: ten minutes later
they were predicting ten-digit prime numbers on demand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She showed them a sequence of two-dimensional shapes; they picked the
next one in the series from a menu of subtly-different alternatives.
She denied them multiple choice, showed them the beginning of a whole
new sequence and taught them to draw on the touch-sensitive interface
with the tips of their arms. They finished that series in precise
freehand, rendered a chain of logical descendants ending with a
figure that led inexorably back to the starting point.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;These aren't <I>drones</I>.&quot; James's voice caught in her
throat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;This is all just crunching,&quot; Cunningham said. &quot;Millions
of computer programs do it without ever waking up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're <I>intelligent</I>, Robert. They're smarter than us.
Maybe they're smarter than <I>Jukka</I>. And we're—why can't
you just <I>admit</I> it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could see it all over her: <I>Isaac </I>would have admitted it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Because they don't have the circuitry,&quot; Cunningham
insisted. &quot;How could—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>I don't know how!</I>&quot; she cried. &quot;That's <I>your</I>
job! All <I>I</I> know is that I'm torturing beings that can think
rings around us...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not for much longer, at least. Once you figure out the
language—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;Robert, I haven't a <I>clue</I> about the
language. We've been at it for—for hours, haven't we? The
Gang's all here, language databases four thousand years thick, all
the latest linguistic algorithms. And we know exactly what they're
saying, we're watching every possible way they could be <I>saying</I>
it. Right down to the Angstrom.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Precisely. So—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I've got <I>nothing</I>. I know they're talking through
pigment mosaics. There might even be something in the way they move
those bristles. But I can't find the <I>pattern</I>, I can't even
follow how they <I>count</I>, much less tell them I'm...sorry...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody spoke for a while. Bates watched us from the galley on our
ceiling, but made no attempt to join the proceedings. On ConSensus
the reprieved scramblers floated in their cages like multiarmed
martyrs.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well,&quot; Cunningham said at last, &quot;since this seems to
be the day for bad news, here's mine. They're dying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James put her face in her hand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not your interrogation, for whatever that's worth,&quot;
the biologist continued. &quot;As far as I can determine, some of
their metabolic pathways are just <I>missing</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Obviously you just haven't found them yet.&quot; That was
Bates, speaking up from across the drum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>No</I>,&quot; Cunningham said, slowly and distinctly,
&quot;<I>obviously</I> those parts aren't available to the organism.
Because they're falling apart pretty much the same way you'd expect
one of <I>us</I> to, if—if all the mitotic spindles in our
cells just <I>vanished</I> out of the cytoplasm, for example. As far
as I can tell they started deteriorating the moment we took them off
<I>Rorschach</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan looked up. &quot;Are you saying they left part of their
biochemistry <I>behind</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Some essential nutrient?&quot; Bates suggested. &quot;They're
not eating—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes to the linguist. No to the major.&quot; Cunningham fell
silent; I glanced across the drum to see him sucking on a cigarette.
&quot;I think a lot of the cellular processes in these things are
mediated externally. I think the reason I can't find any genes in my
biopsies is because they don't <I>have</I> any.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what do they have instead?&quot; Bates asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Turing morphogens.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Blank looks, subtitling looks. Cunningham explained anyway: &quot;A
lot of biology doesn't use genes. Sunflowers look the way they do
because of purely physical buckling stress. You get Fibonacci
sequences and Golden ratios everywhere in nature, and there's no gene
that codes for them; it's all just mechanical interactions. Take a
developing embryo—the genes say <I>start growing</I> or <I>stop
growing</I>, but the number of digits and vertebrae result from the
mechanics of cells bumping against other cells. Those mitotic
spindles I mentioned? Absolutely essential for replication in every
eukaryotic cell, and they accrete like crystals without any genetic
involvement. You'd be surprised how much of life is like that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But you still need <I>genes</I>,&quot; Bates protested, walking
around to join us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Genes just establish the starting conditions to enable the
process. The structure that proliferates afterwards doesn't need
specific instructions. It's classic emergent complexity. We've
known about it for over a century.&quot; Another drag on the stick.
&quot;Or even longer. Darwin cited honeycomb way back in the
eighteen hundreds.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Honeycomb,&quot; Bates repeated.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hardwired
to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay
down a precise hexagon? It doesn't. It's programmed to chew up wax
and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a
circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing
side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other—deform
each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for
close packing anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates pounced: &quot;But the <I>bees</I> are programmed.
<I>Genetically</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You misunderstand. Scramblers are the <I>honeycomb</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach </I>is the bees,&quot; James murmured.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham nodded. &quot;<I>Rorschach</I> is the bees. And I don't
think <I>Rorschach</I>'s magnetic fields are counterintrusion
mechanisms at all. I think they're part of the life-support system.
I think they mediate and regulate a good chunk of scrambler
metabolism. What we've got back in the hold is a couple of creatures
dragged out of their element and holding their breath. And they
can't hold it forever.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How long?&quot; James asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How should I know? If I'm right, I'm not even dealing with
complete organisms here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Guess,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He shrugged. &quot;A few days. Maybe.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;That
which does not kill us, makes us stranger.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Trevor
Goodchild</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You still don't vote,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We would not be releasing the prisoners. Too risky. Out here in the
endless wastelands of the Oort there was no room for <I>live and let
live</I>. Never mind what the Other <I>has</I> done, or what it
<I>hasn't</I>: think of what it <I>could</I> do, if it were just a
little stronger. Think of what it <I>might</I> have done, if we'd
arrived as late as we were supposed to. You look at <I>Rorschach</I>
and perhaps you see an embryo or a developing child, alien beyond
comprehension perhaps but not <I>guilty</I>, not by default. But
what if those are the wrong eyes? What if you should be seeing an
omnipotent murdering God, a planet-killer, not yet finished?
Vulnerable only now, and for a little longer?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was no vampire opacity to that logic, no multidimensional black
boxes for humans to shrug at and throw up their hands. There was no
excuse for the failure to find fault with Sarasti's reasoning, beyond
the fact that his reasoning was without fault. That made it worse.
The others, I knew, would rather have had to take something on faith.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Sarasti had an alternative to capture-release, one he evidently
considered much safer. It took an act of faith to accept <I>that</I>
reasoning, at least; by any sane measure it verged on suicide.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now <I>Theseus</I> gave birth by Caesarian. These progeny were far
too massive to fit through the canal at the end of the spine. The
ship shat them as if constipated, directly into the hold: great
monstrous things, bristling with muzzles and antennae. Each stood
three or four times my height, a pair of massive rust-colored cubes,
every surface infested with topography. Armor plating would hide
most of it prior to deployment, of course. Ribbons of piping and
conduit, ammunition reservoirs and shark-toothed rows of radiator
fins— all to disappear beneath smooth reflective shielding.
Only a few island landmarks would rise above that surface: comm
ports, thrust nozzles, targeting arrays. And gun ports, of course.
These things spat fire and brimstone from a half-dozen mouths apiece.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But for the time being they were just giant mechanical fetuses,
half-extruded, their planes and angles a high-contrast jigsaw of
light and shadow in the harsh white glow of the hold's floodlamps.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned from the port. &quot;That's got to take our substrate
stockpiles down a bit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shielding the carapace was worse.&quot; Bates monitored
construction through a dedicated flatscreen built right into the Fab
bulkhead. Practicing, perhaps; we'd be losing our inlays as soon as
the orbit changed. &quot;We're tapping out, though. Might have to
grab one of the local rocks before long.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Huh.&quot; I looked back into the hold. &quot;You think
they're necessary?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Doesn't matter what I think. You're a bright guy, Siri. Why
can't you figure that out?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It matters to me. That means it matters to Earth.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Which might mean something</I>,<I> if Earth was calling the shots.
</I> Some subtext was legible no matter <I>how</I> deep in the system
you were.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tacked to port: &quot;How about Sarasti and the Captain, then?
Any thoughts?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're usually a bit more subtle.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That much was true. &quot;It's just, you know Susan was the one that
caught Stretch and Clench tapping back and forth, right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates winced at the names. &quot;So?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, some might think it odd that <I>Theseus</I> wouldn't have
seen it first. Since quantum computers are supposed to be so
proficient at pattern-matching.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sarasti took the quantum modules offline. The onboard's been
running in classical mode since before we even made orbit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Why</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Noisy environment. Too much risk of decoherence. Quantum
computers are finicky things.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Surely the onboard's shielded. <I>Theseus</I> is shielded.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates nodded. &quot;As much as feasible. But perfect shielding is
perfect blindness, and this is not the kind of neighborhood where you
want to keep your eyes closed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Actually, it was. But I took her point.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I took her other point, too, the one she didn't speak aloud: <I>And
you missed it. Something sitting right there in ConSensus for
anyone to see. Top-of-the-line synthesist like you.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sarasti knows what he's doing, I guess,&quot; I admitted,
endlessly aware that he might be listening. &quot;He hasn't been
wrong yet, as far as we know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As far as we <I>can </I>know,&quot; Bates said.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>If you could second-guess a vampire, you wouldn't need a
vampire</I>,&quot; I remembered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She smiled faintly. &quot;Isaac was a good man. You can't always
believe the PR, though.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't buy it?&quot; I asked, but she was already thinking
she'd said too much. I threw out a hook baited with just the right
mix of skepticism and deference: &quot;Sarasti <I>did</I> know where
those scramblers would be. Nailed it almost the meter, out of that
whole maze.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I suppose that might have taken some kind of superhuman logic,&quot;
she admitted, thinking I was so fucking dumb she couldn't believe it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shrugged. &quot;Or maybe he just realized that since <I>Rorschach</I>
was growing its own crew, we'd run into more every time we went in.
No matter <I>where</I> we landed.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
ConSensus bleeped into my silence. &quot;Orbital maneuvers starting
in five,&quot; Sarasti announced. &quot;Inlays and wireless
prosthetics offline in ninety. That's all.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates shut down the display. &quot;I'm going to ride this out in the
bridge. Illusion of control and all that. You?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My tent, I think.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She nodded, and braced to jump, and hesitated.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;By the way,&quot; she told me, &quot;yes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sorry?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You asked if I thought the emplacements were necessary. Right
now I think we need all the protection we can get.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you think that <I>Rorschach</I> might—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey, it <I>already</I> killed me once. &quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She wasn't talking about radiation.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded carefully. &quot;That must have been…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like nothing at all. You couldn't possibly imagine.&quot;
Bates took a breath and let it out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe you don't have to,&quot; she added, and sailed away up
the spine.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham and the Gang in BioMed, thirty degrees of arc between
them. Each poked their captives in their own way. Susan James
stabbed indifferently at a keypad painted across her desktop.
Windows to either side looked in on Stretch and Clench.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cookie-cutter shapes scrolled across the desk as James typed:
circles, triskelions, a quartet of parallel lines. Some of them
pulsed like abstract little hearts. In his distant pen, Stretch
reached out one fraying tentacle and tapped something in turn.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Any progress?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She sighed and shook her head. &quot;I've given up trying to
understand their language. I'm settling for a pidgin.&quot; She
tapped an icon. Clench vanished from his window; a hieroglyphic
flowchart sprang up in his place. Half the symbols wriggled or
pulsed, endlessly repetitive, a riot of dancing doodles. Others just
sat there.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Iconic base.&quot; James waved vaguely at the display.
&quot;Subject-Verb phrases render as animated versions of noun icons.
They're radially symmetrical, so I array modifiers in a circular
pattern around the central subject. Maybe that comes naturally to
them.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A new circle of glyphs appeared beneath James's—Stretch's
reply, presumably. But something in the system didn't like what it
saw. Icons flared in a separate window: a luminous counter flashed
500 Watts, and held steady. On the screen, Stretch writhed. It
reached out with squirming backbone-arms and stabbed repeatedly at
its touchpad.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James looked away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
New glyphs appeared. 500 Watts retreated to zero. Stretch returned
to its holding pattern; the spikes and jags of its telemetry
smoothed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James let out her breath. &quot;What happened?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wrong answer.&quot; She tapped into Stretch's feed, showed me
the display that had tripped it up. A pyramid, a star, simplified
representations of a scrambler and of <I>Rorschach</I> rotated on the
board.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was stupid, it was just a—a warm-up exercise, really.
I asked it to name the objects in the window.&quot; She laughed
softly and without humor. &quot;That's the thing about <I>functional</I>
languages, you know. If you can't point at it, you can't talk about
it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And what did it say?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She pointed at Stretch's first spiral: &quot;Polyhedron star
<I>Rorschach</I> are present.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It missed the scrambler.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Got it right the second time. Still, stupid mistake for
something that can think rings around a vampire, isn't it?&quot;
Susan swallowed. &quot;I guess even scramblers slip up when they're
dying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't know what to say. Behind me, barely audible, Cunningham
muttered some two-stroke mantra to himself in an endless loop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jukka says—&quot; Susan stopped, began again: &quot;You
know that <I>blindsight</I> we get sometimes, in <I>Rorschach</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded, and wondered what Jukka had said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Apparently the same thing can happen to the other senses too,&quot;
she told me. &quot;You can have blind<I>touch</I>, and blind<I>smell</I>,
and blind<I>hearing</I>...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That would be deafness.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;But it isn't really, is it? Any more than
blind<I>sight</I> is really blindness. <I>Something </I>in your head
is still taking it all in. Something in the brain is still seeing,
and hearing, even if you're not—aware of it. Unless someone
forces you to <I>guess</I>, or there's some threat. You just get a
really strong feeling you should move out of the way, and five
seconds later a bus drives over the spot you were standing. You <I>knew</I>
it was coming, somehow. You just don't know <I>how</I> you knew.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's wild,&quot; I agreed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;These scramblers—they <I>know</I> the answers, Siri.
They're intelligent, we <I>know</I> they are. But it's almost as
though <I>they</I> don't know they know, unless you hurt them. As if
they've got blindsight spread over every sense.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I tried to imagine it: life without sensation, without any active
awareness of one's environment. I tried to imagine existing like
that without going mad. &quot;Do you think that's possible?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know. It's just a—a metaphor, I guess.&quot;
She didn't believe that. Or she didn't know. Or she didn't want me
to know.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I should have been able to tell. She should have been <I>clear</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;At first I just thought they were resisting,&quot; she said,
&quot;but why <I>would</I> they?&quot; She turned bright, begging
eyes on me, pleading for an answer.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't have one. I didn't have a clue. I turned away from Susan
James, only to find myself facing Robert Cunningham: Cunningham the
mutterer, fingers tapping against tabletop interfaces, inner eyes
blinded, vision limited now to the pictures ConSensus sketched in
airspace or threw against flat surfaces for everyone to see. His
face remained as empty of feeling as it had ever been; the rest of
his body twitched like a bug in a spiderweb.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He might as well have been. We all might. <I>Rorschach</I> loomed
barely nine kilometers away now, so near it might have eclipsed Ben
itself if I'd been brave enough to look outside. We had closed to
this insane proximity and <I>parked.</I> Out there, <I>Rorschach</I>
grew like a live thing. <I>In</I> there, live things grew, budded
like jellyfish from some demonic mechanical substrate. Those lethal,
vacant corridors we'd crept along, frightened of the shadows planted
in our heads—they were probably filling with scramblers right
now. All those hundreds of kilometers of twisted tunnels and
passages and chambers. Filling with an army.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This was Sarasti's safer alternative. This was the path we'd
followed because it would have been <I>too dangerous</I> to release
the prisoners. We were so deep inside the bow shock that we'd had
to shut down our internal augments; while <I>Rorschach</I>'s
magnetosphere was orders of magnitude weaker here than within the
structure itself, who knew if the alien might find us too tempting a
target—or too great a threat—at this range? Who knew
when it might choose to plunge some invisible spike through <I>Theseus</I>'s
heart?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Any pulse that could penetrate the ship's shielding would doubtless
fry <I>Theseus</I>'s nervous system as well as the wiring in our
heads. I supposed that five people in a dead ship would have a
marginally greater chance of survival if their brains weren't
sparking in the bargain, but I doubted that such a difference would
<I>make</I> much difference. Sarasti had obviously figured the odds
differently. He'd even shut down the antiEuclidean pump in his own
head, resorted to manual injections to keep <I>himself</I> from
short-circuiting.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Stretch and Clench were even closer to <I>Rorschach</I> than we were.
Cunningham's lab had been kicked free of the ship; it floated now
just a few kilometers from the artefact's outermost spires, deep
within the folds of its magnetic field. If the scramblers needed
radioactive magnetite to function, this was the most they were going
to get: a taste of the fields, but not of freedom. The lab's
shielding was being dynamically fine-tuned to balance medical
necessity against tactical risk, as best the data allowed. The
structure floated in the watchful crosshairs of our newborn gun
emplacements, strategically positioned to either side. Those
emplacements could destroy the hab in an instant. They could
probably destroy anything approaching it as well.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They couldn't destroy <I>Rorschach</I>, of course. Maybe nothing
could.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Covert to invulnerable. As far as we knew that hadn't happened yet.
Presumably <I>Theseus</I> could still do something about the artefact
accreting off our bow, assuming we could decide which thing to do.
Sarasti wasn't talking. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time
any of us had even <I>seen</I> the vampire in the flesh. For several
shifts now he had confined himself to his tent, speaking only through
ConSensus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Everyone was on edge, and the transient had gone quiet.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham muttered to himself, stabbed at unfamiliar controls with
unpracticed fingers, cursed his own clumsiness. Stimulus and
response flowed through lasers across six kilometers of ionized
vacuum. The ever-present nicotine stick hung from one corner of his
mouth for want of a free hand. Every now and then flecks of ash
broke free and drifted obliquely towards the ventilators.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He spoke before I could. &quot;It's all in ConSensus.&quot; When I
didn't leave he relented, but wouldn't look at me: &quot;Magnetite
flecks lined up as soon as they got past the wavefront, more or less.
Membranes started to fix themselves. They're not failing as fast.
But it's <I>Rorschach</I>'s <I>internal</I> environment that will be
optimized for scrambler metabolism. Out here, I think the most we
can do is slow the rate of dying.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's something, at least.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham grunted. &quot;Some of the pieces are coming together.
Others—their nerves are frayed, for no good reason. Literally.
Signal leakage along the cables.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Because of their deterioration?&quot; I guessed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And I can't get the Arrhenius equation to balance, there's all
this nonlinearity at low temperatures. The preexponential value's
completely fucked up. It's almost as though temperature doesn't
<I>matter</I>, and —<I>shit</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Some critical value had exceeded a confidence limit on one of his
displays. He glanced up the drum, raised his voice: &quot;Need
another biopsy, Susan. Anywhere central.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What—oh. Just a second.&quot; She shook her head and
tapped off a brief spiral of icons, as listless as the captives she
commanded. On one of Cunningham's windows Stretch viewed her input
with its marvelous sighted skin. It floated unresponsive for a
moment. Then it folded back the arms facing one wall, opening a
clear path for Cunningham's teleops.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He called two of them from their burrows like prehensile serpents.
The first wielded a clinical core-sampler; the second wielded the
threat of violence in case of foolish resistance. It was hardly
necessary. Blindsighted or not, scramblers were fast learners.
Stretch exposed its belly like a victim resigned to imminent rape.
Cunningham fumbled; the teleops bumped together, briefly entangled.
He cursed and tried again, every move shouting frustration. His
extended phenotype had been amputated; once the very ghost in the
machine, now he was just another guy punching buttons, and—
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and suddenly, something <I>clicked</I>. Cunningham's facades
swirled to translucency before my eyes. Suddenly, I could almost
<I>imagine</I> him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He got it right the second time. The tip of his machine shot out
like a striking snake and darted back again, almost too fast to see.
Waves of color flushed from Stretch's injury like ripples chased
across still water by a falling stone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham must have thought he saw something in my face. &quot;It
helps if you try not to think of them as people,&quot; he said. And
for the very first time I could read the subtext, as clear and sharp
as broken glass:
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Of course, you don't think of </I>anyone<I> that way...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham didn't like to be <I>played</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No one does. But most people don't think that's what I'm doing.
They don't know how much their bodies betray when they close their
mouths. When they speak aloud, it's because they want to confide;
when they don't, they think they're keeping their opinions to
themselves. I watch them so closely, customize each word so that no
system ever feels <I>used</I>— and yet for some reason, that
didn't work with Robert Cunningham.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I think I was modeling the wrong system.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you are a synthesist. You deal in the behavior of systems at
their surfaces, infer the machinery <I>beneath</I> from its
reflections <I>above</I>. That is the secret of your success: you
understand the system by understanding the boundaries that contain
it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now imagine you encounter someone who has ripped a hole in those
boundaries and bled beyond them.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Robert Cunningham's flesh could not contain him. His duties pulled
him beyond the meat sack; here in the Oort, his topology rambled all
over the ship. That was true of all of us, to some extent; Bates and
her drones, Sarasti and his limbic link—even the ConSensus
inlays in our heads <I>diffused</I> us a bit, spread us just slightly
beyond the confines of our own bodies. But Bates only ran her
drones; she never <I>inhabited</I> them. The Gang of Four may have
run multiple systems on a single motherboard, but each had its own
distinct topology and they only surfaced one at a time. And Sarasti—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Well, Sarasti was a whole different story, as it turned out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham didn't just operate his remotes; he <I>escaped</I> into
them, wore them like a secret identity to hide the feeble Human
baseline within. He had sacrificed half of his neocortex for the
chance to see x-rays and taste the shapes hiding in cell membranes,
he had butchered one body to become a fleeting tenant of many.
Pieces of him hid in the sensors and manipulators that lined the
scrambler's cages; I might have gleaned vital cues from every piece
of equipment in the subdrum if I'd ever thought to look. Cunningham
was a topological jigsaw like everyone else, but half his pieces were
hidden in machinery. My model was incomplete.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I don't think he ever aspired to such a state. Looking back, I see
radiant self-loathing on every remembered surface. But there in the
waning years of the twenty-first century, the only alternative he
could see was the life of a parasite. Cunningham merely chose the
lesser evil.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now, even that was denied him. Sarasti's orders had severed him
from his own sensorium. He no longer <I>felt</I> the data in his
gut; he had to <I>interpret</I> it, step by laborious step, through
screens and graphs that reduced perception to flat empty shorthand.
Here was a system traumatized by multiple amputations. Here was a
system with its eyes and ears and tongue cut out, forced to stumble
and feel its way around things it had once <I>inhabited</I>, right
down in the bone. Suddenly there was nowhere else to hide, and all
those far-flung pieces of Robert Cunningham tumbled back into his
flesh where I could see them at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It had been my mistake, all along. I'd been so focused on modelling
other systems that I'd forgotten about the one doing the modelling.
Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions can be
just as blinding, and it wasn't enough to imagine I was Robert
Cunningham.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I had to imagine I was Siri Keeton as well.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Of course, that only raises another question. If my guess about
Cunningham was right, why did my tricks work on Isaac Szpindel? He
was every bit as discontinuous as his replacement.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't think about it much at the time. Szpindel was gone but the
thing that had killed him was still there, hanging right off the bow,
a vast swelling enigma that might choose to squash us at any instant.
I was more than a little preoccupied.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now, though—far too late to do anything about it—I think
I might know the answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe my tricks didn't work on Isaac either, not really. Maybe he
saw through my manipulations as easily as Cunningham did. But maybe
he just didn't care. Maybe I could read him because he <I>let</I>
me. Which would mean— I can't find another explanation that
fits— that he just <I>liked</I> me, regardless.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I think that might have made him a friend.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;If
I can but make the words awake the feeling&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Ian
Anderson, <I>Stand Up</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Night shift. Not a creature was stirring.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not in <I>Theseus</I>, anyway. The Gang hid in their tent. The
transient lurked weightless and silent below the surface. Bates was
in the bridge&shy;— she more or less lived up there now,
vigilant and conscientious, nested in camera angles and tactical
overlays. There was nowhere she could turn without seeing some
aspect of the cipher off our starboard bow. She did what good she
could, for the good it would do.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The drum turned quietly, lights dimmed in deference to a diel cycle
that a hundred years of tweaks and retrofits hadn't been able to weed
from the genes. I sat alone in the galley, squinting from the inside
of a system whose outlines grew increasingly hazy, trying to compile
my latest—how had Isaac put it?— <I>postcard to
posterity</I>. Cunningham worked upside-down on the other side of
the world.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Except Cunningham wasn't working. He hadn't even moved for at least
four minutes. I'd assumed he was reciting the Kaddish for
Szpindel—ConSensus said he'd be doing it twice daily for the
next year, if we lived that long—but now, leaning to see around
the spinal bundles in the core, I could read his surfaces as clearly
as if I'd been sitting beside him. He wasn't bored, or distracted,
or even deep in thought.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Robert Cunningham was petrified.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I stood and paced the drum. Ceiling turned into wall; wall into
floor. I was close enough to hear his incessant soft muttering, a
single indistinct syllable repeated over and over; then I was close
enough to hear what he was saying—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>fuck fuck fuck fuck...</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and still Cunningham didn't move, although I'd made no attempt
to mask my approach.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Finally, when I was almost at his shoulder, he fell silent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're blind,&quot; he said without turning. &quot;Did you
know that?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I didn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You. Me. Everyone.&quot; He interlocked his fingers and
<I>clenched</I> as if in prayer, hard enough to whiten the knuckles.
Only then did I notice: no cigarette.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<SPAN LANG="en-CA">Vision's mostly a lie anyway,&quot; he
continued. &quot;We don't really see anything except a few hi-res
degrees where the eye focuses. Everything else is just peripheral
blur, just— light and motion. Motion draws the focus. And
your eyes <I>jiggle</I> all the time, did you know that, Keeton?
</SPAN><I>Saccades</I>, they're called<SPAN LANG="en-CA">. </SPAN>Blurs
the image, the movement's way too fast for the brain to integrate so
your eye just—shuts down between pauses. It only grabs these
isolated freeze-frames, but your brain edits out the blanks and
stitches an — an illusion of continuity into your head.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He turned to face me. &quot;And you know what's <I>really</I>
amazing? If something only moves during the gaps, your brain
just—ignores it. It's invisible.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I glanced at his workspace. The usual splitscreen glowed to one
side—realtime images of the scramblers in their pens—but
Histology, ten thousand times larger than life, took center stage.
The paradoxical neural architecture of <I>Stretch &amp; Clench</I>
glistened on the main window, flensed and labeled and overlaid by
circuit diagrams a dozen layers thick. A dense, annotated forest of
alien trunks and brambles. It looked a little like <I>Rorschach</I>
itself.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't parse any of it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you listening, Keeton? Do you know what I'm saying?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You've figured out why I couldn't—you're saying these
things can somehow tell when our eyes are offline, and...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't finish. It just didn't seem possible.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham shook his head. Something that sounded disturbingly like
a giggle escaped his mouth. &quot;I'm saying these things can see
your nerves firing from across the room, and integrate that into a
crypsis strategy, and then send motor commands to <I>act</I> on that
strategy, and then send other commands to <I>stop</I> the motion
before your eyes come back online. All in the time it would take a
mammalian nerve impulse to make it halfway from your shoulder to your
elbow. These things are <I>fast</I>, Keeton. Way faster than we
could have guessed even from that high-speed whisper line they were
using. They're bloody <I>superconductors</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It took a conscious effort to keep from frowning. &quot;Is that even
possible?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Every nerve impulse generates an electromagnetic field. That
makes it detectable.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But <I>Rorschach</I>'s EM fields are so—I mean, reading
the firing of a single optic nerve through all that interference—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's not <I>interference</I>. The fields are <I>part</I> of
them, remember? That's probably how they <I>do </I>it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So they couldn't do that here.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're not <I>listening</I>. The trap you set wouldn't have
caught anything like that, not unless it <I>wanted</I> to be caught.
We didn't grab specimens at all. We grabbed <I>spies</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Stretch and Clench floated in splitscreen before us, arms swaying
like undulating backbones. Cryptic patterns played slowly across
their cuticles.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Supposing it's just— instinct,&quot; I suggested.
&quot;Flounders hide against their background pretty well, but they
don't <I>think</I> about it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Where are they going to get that instinct <I>from</I>, Keeton?
How is it going to evolve? Saccades are an accidental glitch in
mammalian vision. Where would scramblers have encountered them
before now?&quot; Cunningham shook his head. &quot;That thing, that
thing Amanda's robot fried— it developed that strategy on its
own, <I>on the spot</I>. It <I>improvised</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The word <I>intelligent</I> barely encompassed that kind of
improvisation. But there was something else in Cunningham's face,
some deeper distress nested inside what he'd already told me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It was <I>stupid</I>,&quot; he said. &quot;The things these
creatures can do, it was just <I>dumb</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well it didn't work, did it? Couldn't keep it up in front of
more than one or two of us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because people's eyes don't flicker in synch, I realized. Too many
witnesses stripped it of cover.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;—many <I>other</I> things it could have done,&quot;
Cunningham was saying. &quot;They could've induced Anton's or, or an
agnosia: then we could have tripped over a whole herd of scramblers
and it wouldn't even register in our conscious minds. Agnosias
happen by <I>accident</I>, for God's sake. If you've got the senses
and reflexes to hide between someone's saccades, why stop there? Why
not do something that <I>really</I> works?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why do you think?&quot; I asked, reflexively nondirective.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think that first one was—you know it was a juvenile,
right? Maybe it was just inexperienced. Maybe it was <I>stupid</I>,
and it made a bad decision. I think we're dealing with a species so
far beyond us that even their retarded <I>children</I> can rewire our
brains on the fly, and I can't tell you how fucking scared that
should make you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I could see it in his topology. I could hear it in his voice. His
nerveless face remained as calm as a corpse.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We should just kill them now,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, if they're spies, they can't have learned much. They've
been in those cages the whole time, except—&quot; <I>for the
way up</I>. They'd been right next to us the whole trip back…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;These things live and breath EM. Even stunted, even isolated,
who knows how much of our tech they could have just read through the
<I>walls</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You've got to tell Sarasti,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, Sarasti knows. Why do you think he wouldn't let them go?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He never said anything about—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He'd be <I>crazy</I> to fill us in. He keeps sending you <I>down</I>
there, remember? Do you think for a second he'd tell you what he
knows and then set you loose in a labyrinth full of mind-reading
minotaurs? He knows, and he's already got it factored a thousand
ways to Sunday.&quot; Cunningham's eyes were bright manic points blazing
in an expressionless mask. He raised them to the center of the drum,
and didn't raise his voice a decibel. &quot;Isn't that right, Jukka?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I checked ConSensus for active channels. &quot;I don't think he's
listening, Robert.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham's mouth moved in something that would have been a pitying
smile if the rest of his face had been able to join in. &quot;He
doesn't have to <I>listen</I>, Keeton. He doesn't have to spy on us.
He just <I>knows</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ventilators, breathing. The almost-subliminal hum of bearings in
motion. Then Sarasti's disembodied voice rang forth through the
drum.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Everyone to Commons. Robert wants to share.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham sat to my right, his plastic face lit from beneath by the
conference table. He stared down into that light, rocking
slightly. His lips went through the ongoing motions of some
inaudible incantation. The Gang sat across from us. To my left
Bates kept one eye on the proceedings and another on intelligence
from the front lines.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti was with us only in spirit. His place at the head of the
table remained empty. &quot;Tell them,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We have to get out of h—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;From the <I>beginning</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham swallowed and started again. &quot;Those frayed motor
nerves I couldn't figure out, those pointless
cross-connections—they're logic gates. Scramblers <I>time-share</I>.
Their sensory and motor plexii double as associative neurons during
idle time, so every part of the system can be used for cognition when
it isn't otherwise engaged. Nothing like it ever evolved on Earth.
It means they can do a great deal of processing without a lot of
dedicated associative mass, even for an individual.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So peripheral nerves can think?&quot; Bates frowned. &quot;Can
they <I>remember</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Certainly. At least, I don't see why not.&quot; Cunningham
pulled a cigarette from his pocket.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So when they tore that scrambler apart—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not civil war. Data dump. Passing information about <I>us</I>,
most likely.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Pretty radical way to carry on a conversation,&quot; Bates
remarked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It wouldn't be their first choice. I think each scrambler acts
as a node in a distributed network, when they're in <I>Rorschach</I>
at least. But those fields would be configured down to the Angstrom,
and when we go in with our tech and our shielding and blowing <I>holes</I>
in their conductors—we bollocks up the network. Jam the local
signal. So they resort to a sneakernet.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He had not lit his cigarette. He rolled the filtered end between
thumb and forefinger. His tongue flickered between his lips like a
worm behind a mask.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Hidden in his tent, Sarasti took up the slack. &quot;Scramblers also
use <I>Rorschach</I>'s EM for metabolic processes. Some pathways
achieve proton transfer via heavy-atom tunneling. Perhaps the
ambient radiation acts as a catalyst.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Tunneling</I>?&quot; Susan said. &quot;As in <I>quantum</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham nodded. &quot;Which also explains your shielding
problems. Partly, at least.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But is that even <I>possible</I>? I mean, I thought those kind
of effects only showed up under cryonic—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Forget</I> this,&quot; Cunningham blurted. &quot;We can
debate the biochemistry later, if we're still alive.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do we debate instead, Robert?&quot; Sarasti said smoothly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;For starters, the <I>dumbest </I>of these things can look into
your head and see what parts of your visual cortex are lighting up.
And if there's a difference between that and mind-reading, it's not
much of one.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As long as we stay out of <I>Rorschach</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That ship has <I>sailed</I>. You people have already <I>been</I>
there. Repeatedly. Who knows what you already did down there for no
better reason than because <I>Rorschach</I> <I>made</I> you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Wait a second,&quot; Bates objected. &quot;None of us were
<I>puppets</I> down there. We hallucinated and we went blind and—and
crazy even, but we were never <I>possessed</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham looked at her and snorted. &quot;You think you'd be able
to fight the strings? You think you'd even <I>feel</I> them? I
could apply a transcranial magnet to your head right now and you'd
raise your middle finger or wiggle your toes or kick Siri here in the
sack and then swear on your sainted mother's grave that you only did
it because you <I>wanted</I> to. You'd dance like a puppet and all
the time swear you were doing it of your own free will, and that's
just <I>me</I>, that's just some borderline OCD with a couple of
magnets and an MRI helmet.&quot; He waved at the vast unknowable
void beyond the bulkhead. Shreds of mangled cigarette floated
sideways in front of him. &quot;Do you want to guess what <I>that</I>
can do? For all we know we've already given them <I>Theseus</I>'
technical specs, warned them about the Icarus array, and then just
decided <I>of our own free will</I> to forget it all.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>We</I> can cause those effects,&quot; Sarasti said coolly.
&quot;As you say. Strokes cause them. Tumors. Random accidents.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Random?</I> Those were <I>experiments</I>, people! That
was <I>vivisection</I>! They let you in so they could take you apart
and see what made you tick and you never even <I>knew</I> it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>So what</I>?&quot; the vampire snapped invisibly. Something
cold and hungry had edged into his voice. Human topologies shivered
around the table, skittish.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;There's a blind spot in the center of your visual field,&quot;
Sarasti pointed out. &quot;You can't see it. You can't see the
saccades in your visual timestream. Just two of the tricks you <I>know</I>
about. Many others.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham was nodding. &quot;That's my whole <I>point</I>.
<I>Rorschach</I> could be—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not talking about case studies. Brains are survival engines,
not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain
lies. Stops noticing— irrelevant things. Truth never matters.
Only fitness. By now you don't experience the world as it exists at
all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts.
<I>Lies</I>. Whole <I>species</I> is agnosiac by default.
<I>Rorschach</I> does nothing to you that you don't already do to
yourselves.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody spoke. It was several silent seconds before I realized what
had happened.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Jukka Sarasti had just given us a pep talk.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He could have shut down Cunningham's tirade—could have probably
shut down a full-scale mutiny—by just sailing into our midst
and baring his teeth. By <I>looking</I> at us. But he wasn't trying
to frighten us into submission, we were already nervous enough. And
he wasn't trying to educate us either, fight fear with fact; the more
<I>facts</I> any sane person gathered about <I>Rorschach</I>, the
more fearful they'd become. Sarasti was only trying to keep us
<I>functional</I>, lost in space on the edge of our lives, facing
down this monstrous enigma that might destroy us at any instant for
any reason. Sarasti was trying to calm us down: <I> good meat, nice
meat</I>. He was trying to keep us from falling apart. <I>There
there.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti was practicing <I>psychology</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked around the table. Bates and Cunningham and the Gang sat
still and bloodless.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti sucked at it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We have to get out of here,&quot; Cunningham said. &quot;These
things are way beyond us.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We've shown more aggression than they have,&quot; James said,
but there was no confidence in her voice.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Rorschach</I> plays those rocks like marbles. We're sitting
in the middle of a shooting gallery. Any time it feels like—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's still growing. It's not finished.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's supposed to <I>reassure</I> me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;All I'm saying is, we don't <I>know</I>,&quot; James said.
&quot;We could have years yet. Centuries.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We have fifteen days,&quot; Sarasti announced.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh <I>shit</I>,&quot; someone said. Cunningham, probably.
Maybe Sascha.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For some reason everyone was looking at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Fifteen days. Who knows what had gone into that number? None of us
asked aloud. Maybe Sarasti, in another fit of inept psychology, had
made it up on the spur of the moment. Or maybe he'd derived it
before we'd even reached orbit, held it back against the
possibility—only now expired— that he might yet send us
back into the labyrinth. I'd been half blind for half the mission; I
didn't know.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But one way or another, we had our Graduation Day.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The coffins lay against the rear bulkhead of the crypt—on what
would be the floor during those moments when <I>up</I> and <I>down</I>
held any meaning. We'd slept for years on the way out. We'd had no
awareness of time's passage—undead metabolism is far too
sluggish even to support dreams—but somehow the body knew when
it needed a change. Not one of us had chosen to sleep in our pods
once we'd arrived. The only times we'd done so had been on pain of
death.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But the Gang had taken to coming here ever since Szpindel had died.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His body rested in the pod next to mine. I coasted into the
compartment and turned left without thinking. Five coffins: four
open and emptied, one sealed. The mirrored bulkhead opposite doubled
their number and the depth of the compartment.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But the Gang wasn't there.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned right. The body of Susan James floated back-to-back with
her own reflection, staring at an inverse tableau: three sealed
sarcophagi, one open. The ebony plaque set into the retracted lid
was dark; the others shone with identical sparse mosaics of blue and
green stars. None of them changed. There were no scrolling ECGs, no
luminous peak-and-valley tracings marked cardio or cns. We could
wait here for hours, days, and none of those diodes would so much as
twinkle. When you're undead, the emphasis is on the second syllable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang's topology had said <I>Michelle</I> when I'd first arrived,
but it was <I>Susan</I> who spoke now, without turning. &quot;I
never met her.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I followed her gaze to the name tag one of the sealed pods:
<I>Takamatsu</I>. The other linguist, the other multiple.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I met everyone else,&quot; Susan continued. &quot;Trained with
them. But I never met my own replacement.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They discouraged it. What would have been the point?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If you want to—&quot; I began.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;Thanks anyway.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Or any of the others—I can only imagine what Michelle—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan smiled, but there was something cold about it. &quot;Michelle
doesn't really want to talk to you right now, Siri.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah.&quot; I hesitated for a moment, to give anyone else a
chance to speak up. When nobody did, I pushed myself back towards
the hatch. &quot;Well, if any of you change—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No. None of us. <I>Ever</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cruncher.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You <I>lie</I>,&quot; he continued. &quot;I see it. We all
do.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I blinked. &quot;Lie? No, I—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't <I>talk.</I> You <I>listen</I>. You don't care
about Michelle. Don't care about anyone. You just want what we
<I>know</I>. For your <I>reports</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's not entirely true, Cruncher. I do care. I know
Michelle must—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't know <I>shit</I>. Go away.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm sorry I upset you.&quot; I rolled on my axis and braced
against the mirror.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You <I>can't</I> know Meesh,&quot; he growled as I pushed off.
&quot;You never <I>lost</I> anyone. You never <I>had</I> anyone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You leave her alone.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He was wrong on both counts. And at least Szpindel had died knowing
that Michelle cared for him.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea died thinking I just didn't give a shit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It had been two years or more, and while we still interfaced
occasionally we hadn't met in the flesh since the day she'd left.
She came at me from right out of the Oort, sent an urgent voice
message to my inlays: <I>Cygnus. Please call NOW. It's important.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was the first time since I'd known her that she'd ever blanked the
optics.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I knew it was important. I knew it was bad, even without picture. I
knew <I>because</I> there was no picture, and I could tell it was
worse than bad from the harmonics in her voice. I could tell it was
lethal.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I found out afterwards that she'd gotten caught in the crossfire.
The Realists had sown a fibrodysplasia variant outside the Boston
catacombs; an easy tweak, a single-point retroviral whose results
served both as an act of terrorism and an ironic commentary on the
frozen paralysis of Heaven's occupants. It rewrote a regulatory gene
controlling ossification on Chromosome 4, and rigged a metabolic
bypass at three loci on 17.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Chelsea started growing a new skeleton. Her joints were calcifying
within fifteen hours of exposure, her ligaments and tendons within
twenty. By then they were starving her at the cellular level, trying
to slow the bug by depriving it of metabolites, but they could only
buy time and not much of it. Twenty-three hours in, her striated
muscles were turning to stone.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't find this out immediately, because I didn't call her back.
I didn't need to know the details. I could tell from her voice that
she was dying. Obviously she wanted to say goodbye.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't talk to her until I knew how to do that.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I spent hours scouring the noosphere, looking for precedents.
There's no shortage of ways to die; I found millions of case records
dealing with the etiquette. Last words, last vows, instruction
manuals for the soon-to-bereaved. Palliative neuropharm. Extended
and expository death scenes in popular fiction. I went through it
all, assigned a dozen front-line filters to separate heat from light.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By the time she called again the news was out: acute Golem outbreak
lancing like a white-hot needle through the heart of Boston.
Containment measures holding. Heaven secure. Modest casualties
expected. Names of victims withheld pending notification of kin.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I still didn't know the principles, the <I>rules</I>: all I had were
examples. Last wills and testaments; the negotiation of jumpers with
their would-be rescuers; diaries recovered from imploded submarines
or lunar crash sites. Recorded memoirs and deathbed confessions
rattling into flatline. Black box transcripts of doomed spaceships
and falling beanstalks, ending in fire and static. All of it
relevant. None of it useful; none of it <I>her</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She called again, and still the optics were blank, and still I didn't
answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But the last time she called, she didn't spare me the view.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They'd made her as comfortable as possible. The gelpad conformed to
every twisted limb, every erupting spur of bone. They would not have
left her in any pain.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her neck had torqued down and to the side as it petrified, left her
staring at the twisted claw that had once been her right hand. Her
knuckles were the size of walnuts. Plates and ribbons of ectopic
bone distended the skin of her arms and shoulders, buried her ribs in
a fibrous mat of calcified flesh.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Movement was its own worst enemy. Golem punished even the slightest
twitch, provoked the growth of fresh bone along any joints and
surfaces conspiring to motion. Each hinge and socket had its own
nonrenewable ration of flexibility, carved in stone; every movement
depleted the account. The body seized incrementally. By the time
she let me look at her, Chelsea had almost exhausted her degrees of
freedom.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Cyg,&quot; she slurred. &quot;Know you're there.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her jaw was locked half-open; her tongue must have stiffened with
every word. She did not look at the camera. She could not look at
the camera.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Guess I know why you're not answ'ring. I'll try'nt—<I>try
not</I> to take it pers'n'lly.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ten thousand deathbed goodbyes arrayed around me, a million more
within reach. What was I supposed to do, pick one at random? Stitch
them into some kind of composite? All these words had been for other
people. Grafting them onto Chelsea would reduce them to clichés,
to trite platitudes. To insults.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Want t'say, don' feel bad. I know y're just— 's'not your
fault, I guess. You'd pick up if you could.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And say what? What do you say to someone who's dying in fast-forward
before your eyes?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Just keep trying t'connect, y'know. Can't help m'self…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Although the essentials of this farewell are accurate, details
from several deaths have been combined for dramatic purposes</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Please? Jus'—talk to me, Cyg…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
More than anything, I wanted to.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri, I…just…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd spent all this time trying to figure out <I>how</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Forget't,&quot; she said, and disconnected.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I whispered something into the dead air. I don't even remember what.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I really wanted to talk to her.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Aldous
Huxley</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They'd hoped, by now, to have banished sleep forever.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The waste was nothing short of obscene: a third of every Human life
spent with its strings cut, insensate, the body burning fuel but not
<I>producing</I>. Think of all we could accomplish if we didn't have
to lapse into unconsciousness every fifteen hours or so, if our minds
could stay awake and alert from the moment of infancy to that final
curtain call a hundred twenty years later. Think of eight billion
souls with no off switch and no down time until the very chassis wore
out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Why, we could go to the stars.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It hadn't worked out that way. Even if we'd outgrown the need to
stay quiet and hidden during the dark hours—the only predators
left were those we'd brought back ourselves—the brain still
needed time apart from the world outside. Experiences had to be
catalogued and filed, mid-term memories promoted to long-term ones,
free radicals swept from their hiding places among the dendrites. We
had only reduced the need for sleep, not eliminated it—and that
incompressible residue of downtime seemed barely able to contain the
dreams and phantoms left behind. They squirmed in my head like
creatures in a draining tidal pool.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I woke.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was alone, weightless, in the center of my tent. I could have
sworn something had tapped me on the back. Leftover hallucination, I
thought. A lingering aftereffect of the haunted mansion, going for
one last bit of gooseflesh en route to extinction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But it happened again. I bumped against the keelward curve of the
bubble, bumped again, head and shoulder-blades against fabric; the
rest of me came after, moving gently but irresistibly—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Down</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> was accelerating.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No. Wrong direction. <I>Theseus</I> was <I>rolling</I>, like a
harpooned whale at the surface of the sea. Turning her belly to the
stars.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I brought up ConSensus and threw a Nav-tac summary against the wall.
A luminous point erupted from the outline of our ship, crawled away
from Big Ben leaving a bright filament etched in its wake. I watched
until the numbers read <I>15G</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri. My quarters, please.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I jumped. It sounded as though the vampire had been at my very
shoulder.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Coming.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
An ampsat relay, climbing at long last to an intercept with the
Icarus antimatter stream. Somewhere behind the call of duty, my
heart sank.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We weren't running, Robert Cunningham's fondest wishes
notwithstanding. <I>Theseus</I> was stockpiling ordnance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The open hatch gaped like a cave in the face of a cliff. The pale
blue light from the spine couldn't seem to reach inside. Sarasti
was barely more than a silhouette, black on gray, his bright bloody
eyes reflecting catlike in the surrounding gloom.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Come.&quot; He amped up the shorter wavelengths in deference
to human vision. The interior of the bubble brightened, although the
light remained slightly red-shifted. Like <I>Rorschach</I> with high
beams.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I floated into Sarasti's parlor. His face, normally paper-white, was
so flushed it looked sunburned. <I>He gorged himself</I>, I couldn't
help thinking. <I>He drank deep</I>. But all that blood was his
own. Usually he kept it deep in the flesh, favoring the vital
organs. Vampires were efficient that way. They only washed out
their peripheral tissues occasionally, when lactate levels got too
high.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Or when they were hunting.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He had a needle to his throat, injected himself with three cc's of
clear liquid as I watched. His antiEuclideans. I wondered how often
he had to replenish them, now that he'd lost faith in the implants.
He withdrew the needle and slipped it into a sheath geckoed to a
convenient strut. His color drained as I watched, sinking back to
the core, leaving his skin waxy and corpselike.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're here as official observer,&quot; Sarasti said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I observed. His quarters were even more spartan than mine. No
personal effects to speak of. No custom coffin lined with
shrink-wrapped soil. Nothing but two jumpsuits, a pouch for
toiletries, and a disconnected fiberop umbilicus half as thick as my
little finger, floating like a roundworm in formalin. Sarasti's
hardline to the Captain. Not even a cortical jack, I remembered. It
plugged into the medulla, the brainstem. That was logical enough;
that was where all the neural cabling converged, the point of
greatest bandwidth. Still, it was a disquieting thought—that
Sarasti linked to the ship through the brain of a reptile.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
An image flared on the wall, subtly distorted against the concave
surface: Stretch and Clench in their adjoining cells, rendered in
splitscreen. Cryptic vitals defaced little grids below each image.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The distortion distracted me. I looked for a corrected feed in
ConSensus, came up empty. Sarasti read my expression: &quot;Closed
circuit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
By now the scramblers would have seemed sick and ragged even to a
virgin audience. They floated near the middle of their respective
compartments, segmented arms drifting aimlessly back and forth.
Membranous patches of—skin, I suppose—were peeling from
the cuticles, giving them a fuzzy, decomposing aspect.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The arms move continuously,&quot; Sarasti remarked. &quot;Robert
says it assists in circulation.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded, watching the display.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Creatures that move between stars can't even perform basic
metabolic functions without constant flailing.&quot; He shook his
head. &quot;Inefficient. Primitive.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I glanced at the vampire. He remained fixed on our captives.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Obscene</I>,&quot; he said, and moved his fingers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A new window opened on the wall: the Rosetta protocol, initializing.
Kilometers away, microwaves flooded the holding tanks.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I reminded myself: <I>No interference. Only observation</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
However weakened their condition, the scramblers were not yet
indifferent to pain. They knew the game, they knew the rules; they
dragged themselves to their respective panels and played for mercy.
Sarasti had simply invoked a step-by-step replay of some previous
sequence. The scramblers went through it all again, buying a few
moments' intermittent respite with the same old proofs and theorems.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked, then spoke: &quot;They regenerate these solutions
faster than they did before. Do you think they're acclimated to the
microwaves?&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Another readout appeared on the display; an audio alarm began
chirping somewhere nearby. I looked at Sarasti, and back at the
readout: a solid circle of turquoise backlit by a pulsing red halo.
The shape meant <I>atmospheric anomaly</I>. The color meant <I>oxygen</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt a moment of confusion—(<I>Oxygen? Why would </I>oxygen<I>
set off the alarm?</I>)—until I remembered: Scramblers were
<I>anaerobes</I>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti muted the alarm with a wave of his hand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I cleared my throat: &quot;You're <I>poisoning</I>—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Watch. Performance is consistent. No change.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I swallowed. <I>Just observe.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Is this an execution?&quot; I asked. &quot;Is this a, a mercy
killing?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti looked past me, and smiled. &quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I dropped my eyes. &quot;What, then?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He pointed at the display. I turned, reflexively obedient.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something stabbed my hand like a spike at a crucifixion.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I screamed. Electric pain jolted to my shoulder. I yanked my hand
back without thinking; the embedded blade split its flesh like a fin
through water. Blood sprayed into the air and stayed there, a
comet's tail of droplets tracing the frenzied arc of my hand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sudden scalding heat from behind. Flesh charred on my back. I
screamed again, flailing. A veil of bloody droplets swirled in the
air.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Somehow I was in the corridor, staring dumbly at my right hand. It
had been split to the heel of the palm, flopped at the end of my
wrist in two bloody, bifingered chunks. Blood welled from the torn
edges and wouldn't fall. Sarasti advanced through a haze of trauma
and confusion. His face swam in and out of focus, rich with his
blood or mine. His eyes were bright red mirrors, his eyes were time
machines. Darkness roared around them and it was half a million
years ago and I was just another piece of meat on the African
savannah, a split-second from having its throat torn out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you see the problem?&quot; Sarasti asked, advancing. A
great spider crab hovered at his shoulder. I forced focus through
the pain: one of Bates' grunts, taking aim. I kicked blindly, hit
the ladder through sheer happenstance, careened backwards down the
corridor.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The vampire came after me, his face split into something that would
have been a smile on anyone else. &quot;Conscious of pain, you're
<I>distracted</I> by pain. You're<I> fixated</I> on it. Obsessed by
the one threat, you miss the other.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I flailed. Crimson mist stung my eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So much more <I>aware</I>, so much less <I>perceptive.</I> An
automaton could do better.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>He's snapped</I>, I thought. <I>He's insane</I>. And then <I>No,
he's a transient</I>.<I> He's always been a transient</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>They</I> could do better,&quot; he said softly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>and he's been hiding for days. Deep down. Hiding from the
seals. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>What </I>else<I> would he do?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti raised his hands, fading in and out of focus. I hit
something, kicked without aiming, bounced away through swirling mist
and startled voices. Metal cracked the back of my head and spun me
around.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A hole, a burrow. A place to hide. I dove through, my torn hand
flapping like a dead fish against the edge of the hatch. I cried out
and tumbled into the drum, the monster at my heels.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Startled shouts, very close now. &quot;This wasn't the plan, Jukka!
<I>This wasn't the goddamned plan!</I>&quot; That was Susan James,
full of outrage, while Amanda Bates snarled &quot;<I>Stand down,
right fucking now!</I>&quot; and leapt from the deck to do battle.
She rose through the air, all overclocked reflexes and carboplatinum
augments but Sarasti just batted her aside and kept on coming. His
arm shot out like a striking snake. His hand clamped around my
throat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Is this what you meant?&quot; James cried from some dark
irrelevant hiding place. &quot;Is this your <I>preconditioning</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti <I>shook</I> me. &quot;Are you <I>in </I>there, Keeton?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My blood splattered across his face like rain. I babbled and cried.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Are you <I>listening?</I> Can you <I>see</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And suddenly I could. Suddenly everything clicked into focus.
Sarasti wasn't talking at all. Sarasti didn't even exist anymore.
Nobody did. I was alone in a great spinning wheel surrounded by
things that were made out of meat, things that moved <I>all by
themselves</I>. Some of them were wrapped in pieces of cloth.
Strange nonsensical sounds came from holes at their top ends, and
there were <I>other</I> things up there, bumps and ridges and
something like marbles or black buttons, wet and shiny and embedded
in the slabs of meat. They glistened and jiggled and moved as if
trying to escape.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't understand the sounds the meat was making, but I heard a
voice from somewhere. It was like God talking, and that I couldn't
<I>help</I> but understand.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Get out of your <I>room</I>, Keeton,&quot; it hissed. &quot;Stop
<I>transposing</I> or <I>interpolating </I>or <I>rotating</I> or
whatever it is you do. Just <I>listen</I>. For once in your
goddamned life, <I>understand</I> something. Understand that your
life depends on it. Are you <I>listening</I>, Keeton?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And I cannot tell you what it said. I can only tell you what I
heard.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above
the beasts of the field, it's what makes you <I>special</I>. Homo
<I>sapiens</I>, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what
it <I>is</I>, this <I>consciousness</I> you cite in your own
exaltation? Do you even know what it's <I>for</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that
sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up
afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that
even <I>waking</I> souls are only slaves in denial.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Make a conscious choice. <I>Decide</I> to move your index finger.
Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your
body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self
'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something <I>else</I> set
your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an
afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little
man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as <I>the</I>
person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and
it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But it's not in charge. <I>You're</I> not in charge. If free will
even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of
theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively <I>human</I>
pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe
<I>that</I>'s what sentience would be for— if scientific
breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the <I>sub</I>conscious
mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a
deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied
researcher: <I>stop thinking about the problem</I>. Do something
else. It will come to you if you just stop being <I>conscious</I> of
it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance
is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and
acrobat knows enough to let the mind <I>go</I>, let the body run
itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations
with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in
getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative
peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth
time. You are all sleepwalkers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Don't even <I>try</I> to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother
citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious
performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the
gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if <I>your</I> lessons are all
learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way?
Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred
years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves,
statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to
solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through
<I>sentience</I>? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal
existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of
agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your
parents.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know
the only <I>real</I> purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't
see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on
one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse
reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of
<I>anything</I>. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Oh, but you can't. There's something in the way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And it's fighting back.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own
agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote
stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and
music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for
habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be
<I>earned</I> in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless
introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine
receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It
begins to model the very <I>process</I> of modeling. It consumes
ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless
recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that
accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and
produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and
awaken, and call themselves <I>I</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The system weakens, slows. It takes so much longer now to
<I>perceive</I>—to assess the input, mull it over, <I>decide</I>
in the manner of cognitive beings. But when the flash flood crosses
your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced
self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does
its best. It sees the danger, hijacks the body, reacts a hundred
times faster than that fat old man sitting in the CEO's office
upstairs; but every generation it gets harder to work around this—
this creaking neurological bureaucracy.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I</I> wastes energy and processing power, self-obsesses to the
point of psychosis. Scramblers have no need of it, scramblers are
more parsimonious. With simpler biochemistries, with smaller
brains—deprived of tools, of their ship, even of parts of their
own metabolism—they think rings around you. They hide their
language in plain sight, even when you know what they're saying.
They turn your own cognition against itself. <I>They travel between
the stars</I>. This is what intelligence can do, unhampered by
self-awareness.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I</I> is not the working mind, you see. For Amanda Bates to say
&quot;I do not exist&quot; would be nonsense; but when the processes
beneath say the same thing, they are merely reporting that the
parasites have died. They are only saying that they are free.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">If
the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">we
would be so simple that we couldn't.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Emerson
M. Pugh</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Sarasti, you bloodsucker. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My knees pressed against my forehead. I hugged my folded legs as
though clinging to a branch over a chasm.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>You vicious asshole. You foul sadistic monster.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My breath rasped loud and mechanical. It nearly drowned out the
blood roaring in my ears.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>You tore me apart, you made me piss and shit myself and I cried
like some gutted baby and you stripped me naked, you fucking</I>
thing, <I>you night crawler, you broke my tools, you took away
anything I ever had that let me touch</I> anyone <I>and</I> you
didn't have to<I> you babyfucker, it wasn't necessary but you knew
that didn't you? You just wanted to play. I've seen your kind at it
before, cats toying with mice, catch and release, a taste of freedom
and then pouncing again, biting, not hard enough to kill— not
just yet—before you let them loose again and they're hobbling
now, maybe a leg snapped or a gash in the belly but they're still
</I>trying<I>, still running or crawling or dragging themselves as
fast as they can until you're on them </I>again<I>, and</I> again
<I>because it's</I> fun,<I> because it gives you</I> pleasure <I>you
sadistic piece of shit. You send us into the arms of that hellish
thing and it plays with us too, and maybe you're even working
together because it let me escape just like you do, it let me run
right back into your arms and then you strip me down to some raw
half-brained defenseless </I>animal<I>, I can't rotate or transform I
can't even</I> talk <I>and you—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>You—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>It wasn't even personal, was it? You don't even hate me. You
were just sick of keeping it all in, sick of</I> restraining<I>
yourself with all this meat, and nobody else could be spared from
their jobs. This was </I>my<I> job, wasn't it? Not synthesist, not
conduit. Not even cannon fodder or decoy duty. I'm just something
disposable to sharpen your claws on.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I hurt so much. It hurt just to breathe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was so <I>alone</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Webbing pressed against the curve of my back, bounced me forward
gently as a breeze, caught me again. I was back in my tent. My
right hand itched. I tried to flex the fingers, but they were
embedded in amber. Left hand reached for right, and found a plastic
carapace extending to the elbow.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I opened my eyes. Darkness. Meaningless numbers and a red LED
twinkled from somewhere along my forearm.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't remember coming here. I didn't remember anyone fixing me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Breaking. Being broken. That's what I remembered. I wanted to die.
I wanted to just stay curled up until I withered away.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
After an age, I forced myself to uncoil. I steadied myself, let some
miniscule inertia bump me against the taut insulated fabric of my
tent. I waited for my breathing to steady. It seemed to take hours.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I called ConSensus to the wall, and a feed from the drum. Soft
voices, harsh light flaring against the wall: hurting my eyes,
peeling them raw. I killed visual, and listened to words in the
darkness.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;—a phase?&quot; someone asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan James, her personhood restored. I knew her again: not a meat
sack, no longer a <I>thing</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We <I>have</I> been over this.&quot; That was Cunningham. I
knew him too. I knew them all. Whatever Sarasti had done to me,
however far he'd yanked me from my room, I'd somehow fallen back
inside.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It should have mattered more.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;—because for one thing, if it were really so pernicious,
natural selection would have weeded it out,&quot; James was saying.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You have a naïve understanding of evolutionary processes.
There's no such thing as <I>survival of the fittest</I>. <I>Survival
of the most adequate</I>, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a
solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the
alternatives.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I knew that voice too. It belonged to a demon.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well, <I>we</I> damn well <I>beat the alternatives</I>.&quot;
Some subtle overdubbed harmonic in James' voice suggested a chorus:
the whole Gang, rising as one in opposition.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't believe it. I'd just been mutilated, beaten before their
eyes—and they were talking about <I>biology</I>?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Maybe she's afraid to talk about anything else</I>, I thought.
<I>Maybe she's afraid she might be next.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Or maybe she just couldn't care less what happens to me.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's true,&quot; Sarasti told her, &quot;that your intellect
makes up for your self-awareness to some extent. But you're
flightless birds on a remote island. You're not so much successful
as <I>isolated</I> from any real competition.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No more clipped speech patterns. No more terse phrasing. The
transient had made his kill, found his release. Now he didn't care
<I>who </I>knew he was around.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You?&quot; Michelle whispered. &quot;Not <I>we</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>We</I> stop racing long ago,&quot; the demon said at last.
&quot;It's not our fault you don't leave it at that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Ah.&quot; Cunningham again. &quot;Welcome back. Did you look
in on Ke—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Satisfied?&quot; the demon asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;If you mean the grunts, I'm satisfied you're out of them,&quot;
Bates said. &quot;If you mean— it was completely unwarranted,
Jukka.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It isn't.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You assaulted a crewmember. If we had a brig you'd be in it
for the rest of the trip.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;This isn't a military vessel, Major. You're not in charge.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't need a visual feed to know what Bates thought of that. But
there was something else in her silence, something that made me bring
the drum camera back online. I squinted against the corrosive light,
brought down the brightness until all that remained was a faint
whisper of pastels.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Yes. Bates. Stepping off the stairway onto the deck
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Grab a chair,&quot; Cunningham said from his seat in the
Commons. &quot;It's golden oldies time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was something about her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm sick of that song,&quot; Bates said. &quot;We've played it
to death.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Even now, my tools chipped and battered, my perceptions barely more
than baseline, I could see the change. This torture of prisoners,
this assault upon crew, had crossed a line in her head. The
others wouldn't see it. The lid on her affect was tight as a
boilerplate. But even through the dim shadows of my window the
topology glowed around her like neon.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Amanda Bates was no longer merely <I>considering</I> a change of
command. Now it was only a matter of when.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The universe was closed and concentric.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My tiny refuge lay in its center. Outside that shell was another,
ruled by a monster, patrolled by his lackeys. Beyond that was
another still, containing something even more monstrous and
incomprehensible, something that might soon devour us all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was nothing else. Earth was a vague hypothesis, irrelevant to
this pocket cosmos. I saw no place into which it might fit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I stayed in the center of the universe for a long time, hiding. I
kept the lights off. I didn't eat. I crept from my tent only to
piss or shit in the cramped head down at Fab, and only when the spine
was deserted. A field of painful blisters rose across my
flash-burned back, as densely packed as kernels on a corncob. The
slightest abrasion tore them open.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Nobody tapped at my door, nobody called my name through ConSensus. I
wouldn't have answered if they had. Maybe they knew that, somehow.
Maybe they kept their distance out of respect for my privacy and my
disgrace.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe they just didn't give a shit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I peeked outside now and then, kept an eye on Tactical. I saw <I>Scylla</I>
and <I>Charybdis</I> climb into the accretion belt and return towing
captured reaction mass in a great distended mesh between them. I
watched our ampsat reach its destination in the middle of nowhere,
saw antimatter's quantum blueprints stream down into <I>Theseus</I>'s
buffers. Mass and specs combined in Fab, topped up our reserves,
forged the tools that Jukka Sarasti needed for his master plan,
whatever that was.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe he'd lose. Maybe <I>Rorschach</I> would kill us all, but not
before it had played with Sarasti the way Sarasti had played with me.
That would almost make it worthwhile. Or maybe Bates' mutiny would
come first, and succeed. Maybe she would slay the monster, and
commandeer the ship, and take us all to safety.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But then I remembered: the universe was closed, and so very small.
There was really nowhere else to go.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I put my ear to feeds throughout the ship. I heard routine
instructions from the predator, murmured conversations among the
prey. I took in only sound, never sight; a video feed would have
spilled light into my tent, left me naked and exposed. So I listened
in the darkness as the others spoke among themselves. It didn't
happen often any more. Perhaps too much had been said already,
perhaps there was nothing left to do but mind the countdown.
Sometimes hours would pass with no more than a cough or a grunt.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
When they did speak, they never mentioned my name. Only once did I
hear any of them even hint at my existence.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That was Cunningham, talking to Sascha about zombies. I heard them
in the galley over breakfast, unusually talkative. Sascha hadn't
been let out for a while, and was making up for lost time.
Cunningham let her, for reasons of his own. Maybe his fears had been
soothed somehow, maybe Sarasti had revealed his master plan. Or
maybe Cunningham simply craved distraction from the imminence of the
enemy.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't <I>bug</I> you?&quot; Sascha was saying. &quot;Thinking
that your mind, the very thing that makes you <I>you</I>, is nothing
but some kind of parasite?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Forget about <I>minds</I>,&quot; he told her. &quot;Say you've
got a device designed to monitor—oh, cosmic rays, say. What
happens when you turn its sensor around so it's not pointing at the
sky anymore, but at its own guts?&quot; He answered himself before
she could: &quot;It does what it's built to. It measures cosmic
rays, even though it's not looking at them any more. It parses its
own circuitry in terms of cosmic-ray metaphors, because those <I>feel</I>
right, because they feel natural, because it can't look at things any
other way. But it's the <I>wrong metaphor</I>. So the system
misunderstands everything about itself. Maybe that's not a grand and
glorious evolutionary leap after all. Maybe it's just a design
flaw.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But <I>you're</I> the biologist. You know Mom was right
better'n anyone. Brain's a big glucose hog. Everything it does
costs through the nose.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;True enough,&quot; Cunningham admitted.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So sentience has gotta be <I>good</I> for something, then.
Because it's <I>expensive</I>, and if it sucks up energy without
doing anything useful then evolution's gonna weed it out just like
<I>that</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe it did.&quot; He paused long enough to chew food or suck
smoke. &quot;Chimpanzees are smarter than Orangutans, did you know
that? Higher encephalisation quotient. Yet they can't always
recognize themselves in a mirror. Orangs can.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So what's your point? Smarter animal, less self-awareness?
Chimpanzees are becoming nonsentient?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Or they were, before we stopped everything in its tracks.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So why didn't that happen to us?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What makes you think it didn't?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was such an obviously stupid question that Sascha didn't have an
answer for it. I could imagine her gaping in the silence.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're not thinking this through,&quot; Cunningham said.
&quot;We're not talking about some kind of zombie lurching around
with its arms stretched out, spouting mathematical theorems. A smart
automaton would <I>blend in</I>. It would observe those around it,
mimic their behavior, act just like everyone else. All the while
completely unaware of what it was doing. Unaware even of its own
existence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why would it bother? What would motivate it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;As long as you pull your hand away from an open flame, who
cares whether you do it because it <I>hurts</I> or because some
feedback algorithm says <I>withdraw if heat flux exceeds critical T</I>?
Natural selection doesn't care about <I>motives</I>. If
impersonating something increases fitness, then nature will select
good impersonators over bad ones. Keep it up long enough and no
conscious being would be able to pick your zombie out of a crowd.&quot;
Another silence; I could hear him chewing through it. &quot;It'll
even be able to participate in a conversation like this one. It
could write letters home, impersonate real human feelings, without
having the slightest awareness of its own existence.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I dunno, Rob. It just seems—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, it might not be perfect. It might be a bit redundant, or
resort to the occasional expository infodump. But even <I>real</I>
people do that, don't they?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And eventually, there aren't any real people left. Just robots
pretending to give a shit.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Perhaps. Depends on the population dynamics, among other
things. But I'd guess that at least one thing an automaton lacks is
empathy; if you can't feel, you can't really relate to something that
does, even if you <I>act</I> as though you do. Which makes it
interesting to note how many sociopaths show up in the world's upper
echelons, hmm? How ruthlessness and bottom-line self-interest are so
lauded up in the stratosphere, while anyone showing those traits at
ground level gets carted off into detention with the Realists.
Almost as if society itself is being reshaped from the inside out.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh, come on. Society was <I>always</I> pretty— wait,
you're saying the world's corporate elite are <I>nonsentient</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;God, no. Not nearly. Maybe they're just starting down that
road. Like chimpanzees.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah, but sociopaths don't blend in well.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe the ones that get diagnosed don't, but by definition
they're the bottom of the class. The others are too smart to get
caught, and <I>real</I> automatons would do even better. Besides,
when you get powerful enough, you don't need to act like other
people. Other people start acting like you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha whistled. &quot;Wow. Perfect play-actor.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Or not so perfect. Sound like anyone we know?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They may have been talking about someone else entirely, I suppose.
But that was as close to a direct reference to Siri Keeton that I
heard in all my hours on the grapevine. Nobody else mentioned me,
even in passing. That was statistically unlikely, given what I'd
just endured in front of them all; someone should have said
<I>something</I>. Perhaps Sarasti had ordered them not to discuss
it. I didn't know why. But it was obvious by now that the vampire
had been orchestrating their interactions with me for some time.
Now I was in hiding, but he knew I'd listen in at some point. Maybe,
for some reason, he didn't want my surveillance—contaminated…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He could have simply locked me out of ConSensus. He hadn't. Which
meant he still wanted me in the loop.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Zombies. Automatons. Fucking sentience.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>For once in your goddamned life, </I>understand<I> something.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd said that to me. Or something had. During the assault.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Understand that your life depends on it.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Almost as if he were doing me a <I>favor</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Then he'd left me alone. And had evidently told the others to do the
same.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Are you </I>listening<I>, Keeton?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And he hadn't locked me out of ConSensus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to
Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia.
Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark.
Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional
cluster.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I explored it all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Wegner thought it was an executive summary. Penrose heard it in the
singing of caged electrons. Nirretranders said it was a fraud; Kazim
called it leakage from a parallel universe. Metzinger wouldn't even
admit it existed. The AIs claimed to have worked it out, then
announced they couldn't explain it to us. Gödel was right after
all: no system can fully understand itself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not even the synthesists had been able to rotate it down. The
load-bearing beams just couldn't take the strain.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
All of them, I began to realize, had missed the point. All those
theories, all those drugdreams and experiments and models trying to
prove what consciousness <I>was</I>: none to explain what it was
<I>good</I> for. None needed: obviously, consciousness makes us what
we are. It lets us see the beauty and the ugliness. It elevates us
into the exalted realm of the spiritual. Oh, a few
outsiders—Dawkins, Keogh, the occasional writer of hackwork
fiction who barely achieved obscurity—wondered briefly at the
why of it: why <I>not</I> soft computers, and no more? Why should
nonsentient systems be inherently inferior? But they never really
raised their voices above the crowd. The value of what we are was
too trivially self-evident to ever call into serious question.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Yet the questions persisted, in the minds of the laureates, in the
angst of every horny fifteen-year-old on the planet. Am I nothing
but sparking chemistry? Am I a magnet in the ether? I am more than
my eyes, my ears, my tongue; I am the little thing <I>behind</I>
those things, the thing looking out from inside. But who looks out
from <I>its</I> eyes? What does it reduce to? Who am I? Who am I?<I>
Who am I?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
What a stupid fucking question. I could have answered it in a
second, if Sarasti hadn't forced me to understand it first.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Not
until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Thoreau</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The shame had scoured me and left me hollow. I didn't care who saw
me. I didn't care what state they saw me in. For days I'd floated
in my tent, curled into a ball and breathing my own stink while the
others made whatever preparations my tormentor had laid out for them.
Amanda Bates was the only one who'd raised even a token protest over
what Sarasti had done to me. The others kept their eyes down and
their mouths shut and did what he told them to— whether from
fear or indifference I couldn't tell.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was something else I'd stopped caring about.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sometime during that span the cast on my arm cracked open like a
shucked clam. I upped the lumens long enough to assess its
handiwork; my repaired palm itched and glistened in twilight, a
longer, deeper Fate line running from heel to web. Then back to
darkness, and the blind unconvincing illusion of safety.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti wanted me to believe. Somehow he must have thought that
brutalising and humiliating me would accomplish that—that
broken and drained, I would become an empty vessel to fill as he saw
fit. Wasn't it a classic brainwashing technique—to shatter
your victim and then glue the pieces back together in according to
specs of your own choosing? Maybe he was expecting some kind of
Stockholm Syndrome to set in, or maybe his actions followed some
agenda incomprehensible to mere meat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Maybe he'd simply gone insane.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He had broken me. He had presented his arguments. I had followed
his trail of bread crumbs through ConSensus, through <I>Theseus</I>.
And now, only nine days from graduation, I knew one thing for sure:
Sarasti was wrong. He had to be. I couldn't see <I>how</I>, but I
knew it just the same. He was wrong.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Somehow, absurdly, that had become the one thing I <I>did</I> care
about.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No one in the spine. Only Cunningham visible in BioMed, poring over
digital dissections, pretending to kill time. I floated above him,
my rebuilt hand clinging to the top of the nearest stairwell; it
dragged me in a slow, small circle as the Drum turned. Even from up
there I could see the tension in the set of his shoulders: a system
stuck in a holding pattern, corroding through the long hours as fate
advanced with all the time in the world.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He looked up. &quot;Ah. It lives.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I fought the urge to retreat. <I>Just a conversation, for God's
sake. It's just two people talking. People do it all the time
without your tools. You can do this. You can do this.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Just try</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I forced one foot after another down the stairs, weight and
apprehension rising in lockstep. I tried to read Cunningham's
topology through the haze. Maybe I saw a facade, only microns deep.
Maybe he would welcome almost any distraction, even if he wouldn't
admit it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT SIZE=1 STYLE="font-size: 8pt">Or maybe I was just imagining it.</FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How are you doing?&quot; he asked as I reached the deck.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shrugged.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hand all better, I see.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No thanks to you.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd tried to stop that from coming out. Really.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Cunningham struck a cigarette. &quot;Actually, I <I>was</I> the one
who fixed you up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You also sat there and watched while he took me apart.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I wasn't even there.&quot; And then, after a moment: &quot;But
you may be right. I might very well have sat it out in any event.
Amanda and the Gang <I>did</I> try to intervene on your behalf, from
what I hear. Didn't do a lot of good for anyone.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So you wouldn't even try.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Would you, if the sitution were reversed? Go up unarmed
against a vampire?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I said nothing. Cunningham regarded me for a long moment, dragging
on his cigarette. &quot;He really got to you, didn't he?&quot; he
said at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're wrong,&quot; I said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Am I.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't <I>play</I> <I>people</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Mmmm.&quot; He seemed to consider the proposition. &quot;What
word would you prefer, then?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I <I>observe</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That you do. Some might even call it <I>surveillance</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I—I read body language.&quot; Hoping that that was all
he was talking about.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's a matter of degree and you know it. Even in a crowd
there's a certain expectation of privacy. People aren't prepared to
have their minds read off every twitch of the eyeball.&quot; He
stabbed at the air with his cigarette. &quot;And you. You're a
shapeshifter. You present a different face to every one of us, and
I'll wager none of them is real. The <I>real</I> you, if it even
exists, is invisible...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something knotted below my diaphragm. &quot;Who isn't? Who
doesn't—try to fit in, who doesn't want to get along? There's
nothing <I>malicious</I> about that. I'm a synthesist, for God's
sake! I <I>never</I> manipulate the variables.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Well you see, that's the problem. It's not just <I>variables</I>
you're manipulating.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Smoke writhed between us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But I guess you can't really understand that, can you.&quot;
He stood and waved a hand. ConSensus windows imploded at his side.
&quot;Not your fault, really. You can't blame someone for the way
they're wired.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Give me a fucking break,&quot; I snarled.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
His dead face showed nothing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
That, too, had slipped out before I could stop it—and after
that came the flood: &quot;You put so much <I>fucking </I>stock in
that. You and your <I>empathy</I>. And maybe I <I>am</I> just some
kind of imposter but most people would swear I'd worn their very
souls. I don't <I>need</I> that shit, you don't have to <I>feel</I>
motives to deduce them, it's better if you <I>can't</I>, it keeps
you—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Dispassionate?&quot; Cunningham smiled faintly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Maybe your <I>empathy</I>'s just a comforting lie, you ever
think of that? Maybe you <I>think </I>you know how the other person
feels but you're only feeling <I>yourself</I>, maybe you're even
worse than me. Or maybe we're all just guessing. Maybe the only
difference is that I don't lie to myself about it.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do they look the way you imagined?&quot; he asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What? What are you talking about?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The scramblers. <I>Multijointed arms from a central mass</I>.
Sounds rather similar to me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd been into Szpindel's archives.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I—Not really,&quot; I said. &quot;The arms are
more—flexible, in real life. More segmented. And I never
really got a look at the body. What does that have to do with—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Close, though, wasn't it? Same size, same general body plan.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So <I>what</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why didn't you report it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I did. Isaac said it was just TMS. From <I>Rorschach</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You saw them before <I>Rorschach</I>. Or at least,&quot; he
continued, &quot;you saw <I>something</I> that scared you into
blowing your cover, back when you were spying on Isaac and Michelle.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My rage dissipated like air through a breach. &quot;They—they
knew?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only Isaac, I think. And it kept it between it and the logs.
I suspect it didn't want to interfere with your <I>noninterference</I>
protocols—although I'll wager that was the last time you ever
caught the two of them in private, yes?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I didn't say anything.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Did you think the official observer was somehow exempt from
observation?&quot; Cunningham asked after a while.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; I said softly. &quot;I suppose not.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded. &quot;Have you seen any since? I'm not talking about
run-of-the-mill TMS hallucinations. I mean scramblers. Have you
hallucinated any since you actually saw one in the flesh, since you
<I>knew</I> what they looked like?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought about it. &quot;No.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He shook his head, some new opinion confirmed. &quot;You really are
something, Keeton, you know that? You don't lie to yourself? Even
now, you don't know what you know.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What are you talking about?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You <I>figured it out</I>. From <I>Rorschach</I>'s
architecture, probably—form follows function, yes? Somehow you
pieced together a fairly good idea of what a scrambler looked like
before anyone ever laid eyes on them. Or at least—&quot; He
drew a breath; his cigarette flared like an LED— &quot;part of
you did. Some collection of unconscious modules working their asses
off on your behalf. But they can't show their work, can they? You
don't have conscious access to those levels. So one part of the
brain tries to tell another any way it can. Passes notes under the
table.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Blindsight,&quot; I murmered. <I>You just get a feeling of
where to reach...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;More like schizophrenia, except you saw pictures instead of
hearing voices. You saw <I>pictures</I>. And you <I>still</I>
didn't understand.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I blinked. &quot;But how would I—I mean—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What did you think, that <I>Theseus </I>was haunted? That the
scramblers were communing with you telepathically? What you do—it
<I>matters</I>, Keeton. They told you you were nothing but their
stenographer and they hammered all those layers of hands-off
passivity into you but you just had to take some initiative anyway,
didn't you? Had to work the problem on your own. The only thing you
couldn't do was admit it to yourself.&quot; Cunningham shook his
head. &quot;Siri Keeton. See what they've done to you.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He touched his face.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;See what they've done to us all,&quot; he whispered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I found the Gang floating in the center of the darkened observation
blister. She made room as I joined her, pushed to one side and
anchored herself to a bit of webbing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Susan?&quot; I asked. I honestly couldn't tell any more.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'll get her,&quot; Michelle said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, that's all right. I'd like to speak to all of—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Michelle had already fled. The half-lit figure changed before
me, and said, &quot;She'd rather be alone right now.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I nodded. &quot;You?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James shrugged. &quot;I don't mind talking. Although I'm surprised
you're still doing your reports, after....&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm—not, exactly. This isn't for Earth.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I looked around. Not much to see. Faraday mesh coated the inside of
the dome like a gray film, dimming and graining the view beyond. Ben
hung like a black malignancy across half the sky. I could make out a
dozen dim contrails against vague bands of cloud, in reds so deep
they bordered on black. The sun winked past James's shoulder, <I>our</I>
sun, a bright dot that diffracted into faint splintered rainbows when
I moved my head. That was pretty much it: starlight didn't
penetrate the mesh, nor did the larger, dimmer particles of the
accretion belt. The myriad dim pinpoints of shovelnosed machinery
were lost utterly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Which might be a comfort to some, I supposed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shitty view,&quot; I remarked. <I>Theseus</I> could have
projected crisp first-person vistas across the dome in an instant,
more real than real.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Michelle likes it,&quot; James said. &quot;The way it feels.
And Cruncher likes the diffraction effects, he likes—
interference patterns.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We watched nothing for a while, by the dim half-light filtering out
from the spine. It brushed the edges of James' profile.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You set me up,&quot; I said at last.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She looked at me. &quot;What do you mean?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You were talking around me all along, weren't you? All of you.
You didn't bring me in until I'd been—&quot; How had she put
it? &quot;—<I>preconditioned</I>. The whole thing was planned
to throw me off-balance. And then Sarasti— attacks me out of
nowhere, and—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We didn't know about that. Not until the alarm went off.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Alarm?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;When he changed the gas mix. You must have heard it. Isn't
that why you were there?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He called me to his tent. He told me to watch.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She regarded me from a face full of shadow. &quot;You didn't try to
stop him?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I couldn't answer the accusation in her voice. &quot;I
just—observe,&quot; I said weakly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought you were trying to stop him from—&quot; She
shook her head. &quot;<I>That's </I>why I thought he was attacking
you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You're saying that wasn't an act? You weren't in on it?&quot;
I didn't believe it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I could tell she did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I thought you were trying to <I>protect</I> them.&quot; She
snorted a soft, humorless laugh at her own mistake and looked away.
&quot;I guess I should have known better.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She should have. She should have known that taking orders is one
thing; taking <I>sides </I>would have done nothing but compromise my
integrity.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And I should have been used to it by now.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I forged on. &quot;It was some kind of object lesson. A, a
<I>tutorial</I>. You can't torture the nonsentient or something, and
— and I <I>heard</I> you, Susan. It wasn't news to you, it
wasn't news to anyone except <I>me</I>, and...&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>And you hid it from me. You all did. You and your whole gang and
Amanda too. You've been hashing this out for days and you went out
of your way to cover it up. </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>How did I miss it? How did I miss it?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Jukka told us not to discuss it with you,&quot; Susan admitted.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm <I>out</I> here
for!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He said you'd—resist. Unless it was handled properly.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Handled—Susan, he <I>assaulted</I> me! You <I>saw</I>
what he—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We didn't know he was going to do that. None of us did.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And he did it why? To win an argument?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's what he says.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Do you believe him?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Probably.&quot; After a moment she shrugged. &quot;Who knows?
He's a vampire. He's—opaque.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But his record—I mean, he's, he's never resorted to overt
violence before—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shook her head. &quot;Why should he? He doesn't have to
convince the <I>rest</I> of us of anything. We have to follow his
orders regardless.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So do I,&quot; I reminded her.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He's not trying to convince <I>you</I>, Siri.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ah.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I was only a conduit, after all. Sarasti hadn't been making his case
to me at all; he'd been making it <I>through </I>me, and—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and he was planning for a second round. Why go to such
extremes to present a case to Earth, if Earth was irrelevant?
Sarasti didn't expect the game to end out here. He expected Earth to
<I>do</I> something in light of his—perspective.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But what difference does it make?&quot; I wondered aloud.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She just looked at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Even if he's right, how does it change anything? How does
<I>this</I>—&quot; I raised my repaired hand—&quot;change
anything? Scramblers are intelligent, whether they're sentient or
not. They're a potential threat either way. We still don't know.
So what difference does it make? Why did he <I>do</I> this to me?
How does it <I>matter</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Susan raised her face to Big Ben and didn't answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sascha returned her face to me, and tried to.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It matters,&quot; she said, &quot;because it means we attacked
them before <I>Theseus</I> launched. Before Firefall, even.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>We</I> attacked the—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You don't get it, do you? You don't.&quot; Sascha snorted
softly. &quot;If that isn't the fucking funniest thing I've heard in
my whole short life.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She leaned forward, bright-eyed. &quot;Imagine you're a scrambler,
and you encounter a human signal for the very first time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her stare was almost predatory. I resisted the urge to back away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It should be so easy for you, Keeton. It should be the easiest
gig you've ever had. Aren't you the user interface, aren't you the
Chinese Room? Aren't you the one who never has to look inside, never
has to walk a mile in anyone's shoes, because you figure everyone out
from their <I>surfaces</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She stared at Ben's dark smoldering disk. &quot;Well, there's your
dream date. There's a whole race of nothing <I>but</I> surfaces.
There's no <I>inside</I> to figure out. All the rules are right up
front. So go to work, Siri Keeton. Make us proud.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was no contempt in Sascha's voice, no disdain. There wasn't
even anger, not in her voice, not in her eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was pleading. There were <I>tears</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Imagine you're a scrambler,&quot; she whispered again, as they
floated like tiny perfect beads before her face.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you're a scrambler.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine you have intellect but no insight, agendas but no <I>awareness</I>.
Your circuitry hums with strategies for survival and persistence,
flexible, intelligent, even technological—but no other
circuitry monitors it. You can think of anything, yet are conscious
of nothing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You can't imagine such a being, can you? The term <I>being</I>
doesn't even seem to apply, in some fundamental way you can't quite
put your finger on.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Try.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense
with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent
transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to
follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input.
Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful
information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the
rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or
predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or
destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant
tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which,
while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually
beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of
these eventualities, and many others.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You decode the signals, and stumble:
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>I had a great time. I really enjoyed him. Even if he cost twice
as much as any other hooker in the dome—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>To fully appreciate Kesey's Quartet—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>They hate us for our freedom—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Pay attention, now—</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Understand.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are
needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they
are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have
arisen <I>by</I> chance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way
that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort
does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume
the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness.
The signal is a virus.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The signal is an attack.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And it's coming from right about <I>there</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Now you get it,&quot; Sascha said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I shook my head, trying to wrap it around that insane, impossible
conclusion. &quot;They're not even <I>hostile</I>.&quot; Not even
capable of hostility. Just so profoundly alien that they couldn't
help but treat human language itself as a form of combat.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
How do you say <I>We come in peace</I> when the very words are an act
of war?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That's why they won't talk to us,&quot; I realized.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Only if Jukka's right. He may not be.&quot; It was James
again, still quietly resisting, still unwilling to concede a point
that even her other selves had accepted. I could see why. Because
if Sarasti was right, scramblers were the <I>norm</I>: evolution
across the universe was nothing but the endless proliferation of
automatic, organized complexity, a vast arid Turing machine full of
self-replicating machinery forever unaware of its own existence. And
we—we were the flukes and the fossils. We were the flightless
birds lauding our own mastery over some remote island while serpents
and carnivores washed up on our shores. Susan James could not bring
herself to concede that point—because Susan James, her multiple
lives built on the faith that communication resolves all conflict,
would then be forced to admit the lie. If Sarasti was right, there
was no hope of reconciliation.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A memory rose into my mind and stuck there: a man in motion, head
bent, mouth twisted into an unrelenting grimace. His eyes focused on
one foot, then the other. His legs moved stiffly, carefully. His
arms moved not at all. He lurched like a zombie in thrall to rigor
mortis.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I knew what it was. Proprioreceptive polyneuropathy, a case study
I'd encountered in ConSensus back before Szpindel had died. This was
what Pag had once compared me to; a man who had lost his mind. Only
self-awareness remained. Deprived of the unconscious sense and
subroutines he had always taken for granted, he'd had to focus on
each and every step across the room. His body no longer knew where
its limbs were or what they were doing. To move at all, to even
remain upright, he had to bear constant witness.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There'd been no sound when I'd played that file. There was none now
in its recollection. But I swore I could feel Sarasti at my
shoulder, peering into my memories. I swore I heard him speak in my
mind like a schizophrenic hallucination:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>This is the best that consciousness can do,</I> <I>when left on
its own.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Right answer,&quot; I murmured. &quot;Wrong <I>question</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Stretch, remember? When you asked it which objects were in the
window.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And it missed the scrambler.&quot; James nodded. &quot;So?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It didn't miss the scrambler. You thought you were asking
about the things it <I>saw</I>, the things that <I>existed</I> on the
board. Stretch thought you were asking about—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;The things it was <I>aware</I> of,&quot; she finished.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;He's right,&quot; I whispered. &quot;Oh God. I think he's
right.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Hey,&quot; James said. &quot;Did you see <I>tha—</I>&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I never saw what she was pointing at. <I>Theseus</I> slammed its
eyelids shut and started howling.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Graduation came nine days early.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We didn't see the shot. Whatever gun port <I>Rorschach</I> had
opened was precisely eclipsed on three fronts: the lab-hab hid it
from <I>Theseus</I>, and two gnarled extrusions of the artefact
itself hid it from each of the gun emplacements. A bolus of
incendiary plasma shot from that blind spot like a thrown punch; it
had split the inflatable wide open before the first alarm went up.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Alarms chased us aft. We launched ourselves down the spine through
the bridge, through the crypt, past hatches and crawlspaces, fleeing
the surface for any refuge with more than a hand's-breadth between
skin and sky. Burrowing. ConSensus followed us back, its windows
warping and sliding across struts and conduits and the concave tunnel
of the spine itself. I paid no attention until we were back in the
drum, deep in <I>Theseus</I>' belly. Where we could pretend we were
safer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Down on the turning deck Bates erupted from the head, tactical
windows swirling like ballroom dancers around her. Our own window
came to rest on the Commons bulkhead. The hab expanded across that
display like a cheap optical illusion: both swelling and shrinking
in our sights, that smooth surface billowing towards us while
collapsing in on itself. It took me a moment to reconcile the
contradiction: something had kicked the hab hard from its far side,
sent it careening toward us in a slow, majestic tumble. Something
had <I>opened</I> the hab, spilled its atmosphere and left its
elastic skin drawing in on itself like a deflating balloon. The
impact site swung into view as we watched, a scorched flaccid mouth
trailing tenuous wisps of frozen spittle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Our guns were firing. They shot nonconducting slugs that would not
be turned aside by electromagnetic trickery—invisibly dark and
distant to human eyes but I saw them through the tactical crosshairs
of the firing robots, watched them sew twin dotted blackbodied arcs
across the heavens. The streams converged as the guns tracked their
targets, closed on two attenuate throwing stars fleeing spread-eagled
through the void, their faces turned to <I>Rorschach</I> like flowers
to the sun.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The guns cut them to pieces before they'd even made it half way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But those shredded pieces kept falling, and suddenly the ground
beneath was alive with motion. I zoomed the view: scramblers surged
across <I>Rorschach</I>'s hull like an orgy of snakes, naked to
space. Some linked arms, one to another to another, built squirming
vertebral daisy-chains anchored at one end. They lifted from the
hull, waved through the radioactive vacuum like fronds of articulated
kelp, reaching—grasping—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Neither Bates nor her machines were stupid. They targeted the
interlinked scramblers as ruthlessly as they'd gone after the
escapees, and with a much higher total score. But there were simply
too many targets, too many fragments snatched in passing. Twice I
saw dismembered bits of Stretch and Clench caught by their brethren.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The ruptured hab loomed across ConSensus like a great torn leukocyte.
Another alarm buzzed somewhere nearby: proximity alert. Cunningham
shot into the drum from somewhere astern, bounced off a cluster of
pipes and conduits, grabbed for support. &quot;Holy <I>shit—</I>we
are leaving, aren't we? Amanda?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; Sarasti answered from everywhere.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What—&quot; <I>does it fucking </I>take? I caught
myself. &quot;Amanda, what if it fires on the ship?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It won't.&quot; She didn't take her eyes from her windows.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It can't. If it had spring-loaded any more firepower we'd have
seen a change in thermal <I>and </I>microallometry.&quot; A
false-color landscape rotated between us, its latitudes measured in
time, its longitudes in delta-mass. Kilotons rose from that terrain
like a range of red mountains. &quot;Huh. Came in just under the
noise lim—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti cut her off. &quot;Robert. Susan. EVA.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
James blanched. &quot;<I>What</I>?&quot; Cunningham cried.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Lab module's about to impact,&quot; the vampire said. &quot;Salvage
the samples. <I>Now</I>.&quot; He killed the channel before anyone
could argue.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But Cunningham wasn't about to argue. He'd just seen our death
sentence commuted: why would Sarasti care about retrieving biopsy
samples if he didn't think we stood a chance of escaping with them?
The biologist steadied himself, braced towards the forward hatch.
&quot;I'm <I>there</I>,&quot; he said, shooting into the bow.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I had to admit it. Sarasti's psychology was getting better.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't working on James, though, or Michelle, or—I couldn't
quite tell who was on top. &quot;I can't go out there, Siri, it's—<I>I
can't go out there</I>…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Just observe</I>. <I>Don't interfere</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The ruptured inflatable collided impotently to starboard and
flattened itself against the carapace. We felt nothing. Far away
and far too near, the legions thinned across <I>Rorschach</I>'s
surface. They disappeared through mouths that puckered and dilated
and magically closed again in the artefact's hull. The emplacements
fired passionlessly at those who remained.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Observe.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The Gang of Four strobed at my side, scared to death.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Don't interfere.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It's okay,&quot; I said. &quot;I'll go.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The open airlock was like a dimple in the face of an endless cliff.
I looked out from that indentation into the abyss.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This side of <I>Theseus</I> faced away from Big Ben, away from the
enemy. The view was still unsettling enough: an endless panorama of
distant stars, hard and cold and unwinking. A single, marginally
brighter one, shining yellow, still so very far away. Any scant
comfort I might have taken from that sight was lost when the sun went
out for the briefest instant: a tumbling piece of rock, perhaps. Or
one of <I>Rorschach</I>'s shovelnosed entourage.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
One step and I might never stop falling.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I didn't step, and I didn't fall. I squeezed my pistol, jetted
gently through the opening, turned. <I>Theseus</I>' carapace curved
away from me in all directions. Towards the prow, the sealed
observation blister rose above the horizon like a gunmetal sunrise.
Further aft a tattered snowdrift peeked across the hull: the edge of
the broken labhab.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And past it all, close enough to touch, the endless dark cloudscape
of Big Ben: a great roiling wall extending to some flat distant
horizon I could barely grasp even in theory. When I focused it was
dark and endless shades of gray—but dim, sullen redness teased
the corner of my eye when I looked away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Robert?&quot; I brought Cunningham's suit feed to my HUD: a
craggy, motionless ice field thrown into high contrast by the light
of his helmet. Interference from <I>Rorschach</I>'s magnetosphere
washed over the image in waves. &quot;You there?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Pops and crackles. The sound of breath and mumbling against an
electrical hum. &quot;Four point three. Four point oh. Three point
eight—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Robert?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Three point—<I>shit</I>. What—what are you doing
out here, Keeton? Where's the Gang?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I came instead.&quot; Another squeeze of the trigger and I was
coasting towards the snowscape. <I>Theseus</I>' convex hull rolled
past, just within reach. &quot;To give you a hand.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Let's move it then, shall we?&quot; He was passing through a
crevice, a scorched and jagged tear in the fabric that folded back at
his touch. Struts, broken panels, dead robot arms tangled through
the interior of the ice cave like glacial debris; their outlines
writhed with static, their shadows leaped and stretched like living
things in the sweep of his headlight. &quot;I'm almost—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something that wasn't static moved in his headlight. Something
<I>uncoiled</I>, just at the edge of the camera's view.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The feed died.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Suddenly Bates and Sarasti were shouting in my helmet. I tried to
brake. My stupid useless legs kicked against vacuum, obeying some
ancient brainstem override from a time when all monsters were
earthbound, but by the time I remembered to use my trigger finger the
labhab was already looming before me. <I>Rorschach</I> reared up
behind it in the near distance, vast and malign. Dim green auroras
writhed across its twisted surface like sheet lightning. <I>Mouths
</I>opened and closed by the hundreds, viscous as bubbling volcanic
mud, any one of them large enough to swallow <I>Theseus</I> whole. I
barely noticed the flicker of motion just ahead of me, the silent
eruption of dark mass from the collapsed inflatable. By the time
Cunningham caught my eye he was already on his way, backlit against
the ghastly corpselight flickering on <I>Rorschach</I>'s skin.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I thought I saw him waving, but I was wrong. It was only the
scrambler wrapped around his body like a desperate lover, moving his
arm back and forth while it ran the thrust pistol tethered to his
wrist. <I>Bye-bye</I>, that arm seemed to say, <I>and fuck you,
Keeton</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I watched for what seemed like forever, but no other part of him
moved at all.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Voices, shouting, ordering me back inside. I hardly heard them. I
was too dumbfounded by the basic math, trying to make sense of the
simplest subtraction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Two scramblers. Stretch and Clench. Both accounted for, shot to
pieces before my eyes.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Keeton, do you read? Get back here! Acknowledge!</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I—it can't be,&quot; I heard myself say. &quot;There
were only two—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Return to the ship immediately. Acknowledge.</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I—acknowledged...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I>'s mouths snapped shut at once, as though holding a
deep breath. The artefact began to <I>turn</I>, ponderously, a
continent changing course. It receded, slowly at first, picking up
speed, turning tail and running. <I>How odd</I>, I thought. <I>Maybe
it's more afraid than </I>we<I> are</I>...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But then <I>Rorschach</I> blew us a kiss. I saw it burst from deep
within the forest, ethereal and incandescent. It shot across the
heavens and splashed against the small of <I>Theseus</I>' back,
making a complete and utter fool of Amanda Bates. The skin of our
ship <I>flowed</I> there, and opened like a mouth, and congealled in
a soundless frozen scream.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; margin-top: 1in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">You
cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">Einstein</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I have no idea whether the scrambler made it back home with its
hard-won prize. There was so much lost distance to make up, even if
the emplacements didn't pick it off en route. Cunningham's pistol
might have run out of fuel. And who knew how long those creatures
could survive in vacuum anyway? Maybe there'd been no real hope of
success, maybe that scrambler was dead from the moment it had gambled
on staying behind. I never found out. It had dwindled and vanished
from my sight long before <I>Rorschach</I> dove beneath the clouds
and disappeared in turn.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There had always been three, of course. Stretch, and Clench<SPAN LANG="en-CA">,
</SPAN>and the half-forgotten microwaved remains of a scrambler
killed by an uppity grunt—kept on ice next to its living
brethren, within easy reach of Cunningham's teleops. I tried to
dredge half-glimpsed details from memory, after the fact: had both
of those escapees been spheres, or had one been flattened along one
axis? Had they thrashed, waved their limbs the way some panicky
human might with no ground beneath him? Or had one, perhaps, coasted
lifeless and ballistic until our guns destroyed the evidence?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
At this point, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that at
long last, everyone was on the same page. Blood had been drawn, war
declared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And <I>Theseus</I> was paralysed from the waist down.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Rorschach</I>'s parting shot had punched through the carapace at
the base of the spine. It had just missed the ramscoop and the
telematter assembly. It might have taken out Fab if it hadn't spent
so many joules burning through the carapace, but barring some
temporary pulse effects it left all critical systems pretty much
operational. All it had done was weaken <I>Theseus</I>' backbone
enough to make it snap in two should we ever burn hard enough to
break orbit. The ship would be able to repair that damage, but not
in time.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If it had been luck it would have been remarkable.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And now, its quarry disabled, <I>Rorschach</I> had vanished. It had
everything it needed from us, for the moment at least. It had
information: all the experiences and insights encoded in the
salvaged limbs of its martyred spies. If Stretch-or-Clench's gamble
had paid off it even had a specimen of its own now, which all things
considered we could hardly begrudge it. And so now it lurked
invisibly in the depths, resting perhaps. Recharging.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But it would be back.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> lost weight for the final round. We shut down the
drum in a token attempt to reduce our vulnerable allotment of moving
parts. The Gang of Four—uncommanded, unneeded, the very reason
for their existence ripped away—retreated into some inner
dialog to which other flesh was unwelcome. She floated in the
observatory, her eyes closed as tightly as the leaded lids around
her. I could not tell who was in control.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I guessed. &quot;Michelle?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Siri—&quot; Susan. &quot;Just go.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates floated near the floor of the drum, windows arrayed externally
across bulkhead and conference table. &quot;What can I do?&quot; I
asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She didn't look up. &quot;Nothing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I watched. Bates counted skimmers in one window—mass,
inertia, any of a dozen variables that would prove far too constant
should any of those shovelnosed missiles come at our throat. They
had finally noticed us. Their chaotic electron-dance was shifting
now, hundreds of thousands of colossal sledgehammers in sudden flux,
reweaving into some ominous dynamic that hadn't yet settled into
anything we could predict.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
In another window <I>Rorschach</I>'s vanishing act replayed on
endless loop: a radar image receding deep into the maelstrom, fading
beneath gaseous teratonnes of radio static. It might still be an
orbit, of sorts. Judging by that last glimpsed trajectory <I>Rorschach</I>
might well be swinging around Ben's core now, passing through crushed
layers of methane and monoxide that would flatten <I>Theseus</I> into
smoke. Maybe it didn't even stop there; maybe <I>Rorschach</I> could
pass unharmed even through those vaster, deeper pressures that made
iron and hydrogen run liquid.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We didn't know. We only knew that it would be back in a little under
two hours, assuming it maintained its trajectory and survived the
depths. And of course, it <I>would</I> survive. You can't kill the
thing under the bed. You can only keep it outside the covers.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And only for a while.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A thumbnail inset caught my eye with a flash of color. At my command
it grew into a swirling soap bubble, incongruously beautiful, a
blue-shifted coruscating rainbow of blown glass. I didn't recognize
it for a moment: Big Ben, rendered in some prismatic false-color
enhance I'd never seen before. I grunted softly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates glanced up. &quot;Oh. Beautiful, isn't it?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What's the spectrum?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Longwave stuff. Visible red, infra, down a ways. Good for
heat traces.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Visible red?&quot; There wasn't any to speak of; mostly cool
plasma fractals in a hundred shades of jade and sapphire.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Quadrochromatic palette,&quot; Bates told me. &quot;Like what
a cat might see. Or a vampire.&quot; She managed a half-hearted
wave at the rainbow bubble. &quot;Sarasti sees something like that
every time he looks outside. If he ever looks outside.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You'd think he'd have mentioned it,&quot; I murmured. It was
gorgeous, a holographic ornament. Perhaps even <I>Rorschach</I>
might be a work of art through eyes like these...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't think they parse sight like we do.&quot; Bates opened
another window. Mundane graphs and contour plots sprang from the
table. &quot;They don't even go to Heaven, from what I hear. VR
doesn't work on them, they— see the pixels, or something.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What if he's right?&quot; I asked. I told myself that I was
only looking for a tactical assessment, an official opinion for the
official record. But my words came out doubtful and frightened.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She paused. For a moment I wondered if she, too, had finally lost
patience with the sight of me. But she only looked up, and stared
off into some enclosed distance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What if he's right,&quot; she repeated, and pondered the
question that lay beneath: <I>what can we </I>do<I>?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We could engineer ourselves back into nonsentience, perhaps.
Might improve our odds in the long run.&quot; She looked at me, a
rueful sort of half-smile at the corner of her mouth. &quot;But I
guess that wouldn't be much of a win, would it? What's the
difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I finally saw it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
How long would it take an enemy tactician to discern Bates' mind
behind the actions of her troops on the battlefield? How long before
the obvious logic came clear? In any combat situation, this woman
would naturally draw the greatest amount of enemy fire: take off the
head, kill the body. But Amanda Bates wasn't just a head: she was a
bottleneck, and <I>her </I>body would not suffer from a decapitation
strike. Her death would only let her troops off the leash. How much
more deadly would those grunts be, once every battlefield reflex
didn't have to pass through some interminable job stack waiting for
the rubber stamp?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Szpindel had had it all wrong. Amanda Bates wasn't a sop to
politics, her role didn't deny the obsolescence of Human oversight at
all. Her role <I>depended </I>on it.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She was more cannon fodder than I. She always had been. And I had
to admit: after generations of generals who'd lived for the glory of
the mushroom cloud, it was a pretty effective strategy for souring
warmongers on gratuitous violence. In Amanda Bates' army, picking a
fight meant standing on the battlefield with a bull's-eye on your
chest.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No wonder she'd been so invested in peaceful alternatives.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'm sorry,&quot; I said softly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She shrugged. &quot;It's not over yet. Just the first round.&quot;
She took a long, deep breath, and turned back to her study of
slingshot mechanics. &quot;<I>Rorschach</I> wouldn't have tried so
hard to scare us off in the first place if we couldn't touch it,
right?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I swallowed. &quot;Right.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So there's still a chance.&quot; She nodded to herself.
&quot;There's still a chance.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The demon arranged his pieces for the end game. He didn't have many
left. The soldier he placed in the bridge. He packed obsolete
linguists and diplomats back in their coffin, out of sight and out of
the way.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He called the jargonaut to his quarters— and although it would
be the first time I'd seen him since the attack, his summons carried
not the slightest trace of doubt that I would obey. I did. I came
on command, and saw that he had surrounded himself with faces.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Every last one of them was screaming.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There was no sound. The disembodied holograms floated in silent
tiers around the bubble, each contorted into a different expression
of pain. They were being tortured, these faces; half a dozen real
ethnicities and twice as many hypothetical ones, skin tones ranging
from charcoal to albino, brows high and slanted, noses splayed or
pointed, jaws receding or prognathous. Sarasti had called the entire
hominid tree into existence around him, astonishing in their range of
features, terrifying in their consistency of expression.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A sea of tortured faces, rotating in slow orbits around my vampire
commander.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My God, what <I>is</I> this?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Statistics.&quot; Sarasti seemed focused on a flayed Asian
child. &quot;<I>Rorschach</I>'s growth allometry over a two-week
period.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They're <I>faces</I>…&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded, turning his attention to a woman with no eyes. &quot;Skull
diameter scales to total mass. Mandible length scales to EM
transparency at one Angstrom. One hundred thirteen facial dimensions,
each presenting a different variable. Principle-component
combinations present as multifeature aspect ratios.&quot; He turned
to face me, his naked gleaming eyes just slightly sidecast. &quot;You'd
be surprised how much gray matter is dedicated to the analysis of
facial imagery. Shame to waste it on anything as—counterintuitive
as residual plots or contingency tables.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I felt my jaw clenching. &quot;And the <I>expressions</I>? What do
<I>they</I> represent?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Software customizes output for user.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
An agonized gallery pled for mercy on all sides.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I <I>am</I> wired for hunting,&quot; he reminded gently<I>.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;And you think I don't know that,&quot; I said after a moment.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He shrugged, disconcertingly human. &quot;You ask.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why am I here, Jukka? You want to teach me another <I>object
lesson</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;To discuss our next move.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What move? We can't even run away.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot; He shook his head, baring filed teeth in something
approaching regret.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why did we wait so long?&quot; Suddenly my sullen defiance had
evaporated. I sounded like a child, frightened and pleading. &quot;Why
didn't we just take it on when we first got here, when it was
<I>weaker</I>…?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;We need to learn things. For next time.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Next time? I thought <I>Rorschach</I> was a dandelion seed. I
thought it just—washed up here—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;By chance. But every dandelion is a clone. Their seeds are
legion.&quot; Another smile, not remotely convincing— &quot;And
maybe it takes more than one try for the placental mammals to conquer
Australia.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It'll annihilate us. It doesn't even need those spitballs, it
could pulverize us with one of those scramjets. In an instant.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It doesn't want to.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How do you <I>know</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;They need to learn things too. They want us intact. Improves
our odds.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not enough. We can't win.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
This was his cue. This was the point at which Uncle Predator would
smile at my naiveté, and take me into his confidence. <I>Of
</I>course<I> we're armed to the teeth</I>, he would say. <I>Do you
think we'd come all this way, face such a vast unknown, without the
means to defend ourselves? Now, at last, I can reveal that shielding
and weaponry account for over half the ship's mass…</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was his <I>cue</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No,&quot; he said. &quot;We can't win.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;So we just sit here. We just wait to die for the next—the
next sixty-eight minutes...&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti shook his head. &quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—&quot; I began.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Oh,&quot; I finished.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because of course, we had just topped up our antimatter reserves.
<I>Theseus</I> was not equipped with weapons. <I>Theseus</I> <I>was</I>
the weapon. And we were, in fact, going to sit here for the next
sixty-eight minutes, waiting to die.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But we were going to take <I>Rorschach</I> with us when we did.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti said nothing. I wondered what he saw, looking at me. I
wondered if there actually <I>was</I> a Jukka Sarasti behind those
eyes to see, if his insights—always ten steps ahead of our own—
hailed not so much from superior analytical facilities as from the
timeworn truth that <I>it takes one to know one</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Whose side, I wondered, would an automaton take?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You have other things to worry about,&quot; he said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He moved towards me; I swear, all those agonized faces followed him
with their eyes. He studied me for a moment, the flesh crinkling
around his eyes. Or maybe some mindless algorithm merely processed
visual input, correlated aspect ratios and facial tics, fed
everything to some output subroutine with no more awareness than a
stats program. Maybe there was no more spark in this creature's face
than there was in all the others, silently screaming in his wake.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Is Susan afraid of you?&quot; the thing before me asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Su—why should she be?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She has four conscious entities in her head. She's four times
more sentient than you. Doesn't that make you a threat?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No, of course not.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Then why should you feel threatened by me?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And suddenly I didn't care any more. I laughed out loud, with
minutes to live and nothing to lose. &quot;<I>Why</I>? Maybe
because you're my natural enemy, you fucker. Maybe because I <I>know</I>
you, and you can't even <I>look</I> at one of us without flexing your
claws. Maybe because you nearly ripped my fucking hand off and raped
me for no good reason—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I can imagine what it's like,&quot; he said quietly. &quot;Please
don't make me do it again.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I fell instantly silent.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I know your race and mine are never on the best of terms.&quot;
There was a cold smile in his voice if not on his face. &quot;But I
do only what you force me to. You <I>rationalize</I>, Keeton. You
<I>defend</I>. You reject unpalatable truths, and if you can't
reject them outright you trivialize them. Incremental evidence is
never enough for you. You hear rumors of Holocaust; you dismiss
them. You see evidence of genocide; you insist it can't be so bad.
Temperatures rise, glaciers melt—species <I>die</I>—and
you blame sunspots and volcanoes. Everyone is like this, but you
most of all. You and your Chinese Room. You turn incomprehension
into mathematics, you reject the truth without even knowing what it
is.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It served me well enough.&quot; I wondered at the ease with
which I had put my life into the past tense.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes, if your purpose is only to <I>transmit</I>. Now you have
to <I>convince</I>. You have to <I>believe</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
There were implications there I didn't dare to hope for. &quot;Are
you saying—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can't afford to let the truth <I>trickle</I> through. Can't
give you the chance to shore up your rationales and your defenses.
They must fall completely. You must be <I>inundated</I>. Shattered.
Genocide's impossible to deny when you're buried up to your neck in
dismembered bodies.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He'd <I>played</I> me. All this time. <I>Preconditioning</I> me,
turning my topology inside-out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd known something was going on. I just hadn't understood <I>what</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I'd have seen right through it,&quot; I said, &quot;if you
hadn't made me get involved.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You might even read it off me directly.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>That's</I> why you—&quot; I shook my head. &quot;I
thought that was because we were <I>meat</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;That too,&quot; Sarasti admitted, and looked right at me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
For the first time, I looked right back. And felt a shock of
recognition.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I still wonder why I never saw it before. For all those years I
remembered the thoughts and feelings of some different, younger
person, some remnant of the boy my parents had hacked out of my head
to make room for me. He'd been <I>alive</I>. His world had been
vibrant. And though I could call up the memories of that other
consciousness, I could barely feel anything within the constraints of
my own.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Perhaps <I>dreamstate</I> wasn't such a bad word for it…</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Like to hear a vampire folk tale?&quot; Sarasti asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Vampires have folk tales?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He took it for a <I>yes</I>. &quot;A laser is assigned to find the
darkness. Since it lives in a room without doors, or windows, or any
other source of light, it thinks this will be easy. But everywhere
it turns it sees brightness. Every wall, every piece of furniture it
points at is brightly lit. Eventually it concludes there <I>is</I>
no darkness, that light is everywhere.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What the hell are you talking about?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Amanda is not planning a mutiny.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What? You know about—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She doesn't even want to. Ask her if you like.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No—I—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You value objectivity.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It was so obvious I didn't bother answering.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He nodded as if I had. &quot;Synthesists can't have opinions of
their own. So when you feel one, it must be someone else's. The
<I>crew</I> holds you in contempt. <I>Amanda </I>wants me relieved
of command. Half of <I>us</I> is <I>you</I>. I think the word is
<I>project</I>. Although,&quot;—he cocked his head a bit to
one side—&quot;lately you improve. Come.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Where?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Shuttle bay. Time to do your job.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;My—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Survive and bear witness.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;A drone—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can deliver the data—assuming nothing fries its memory
before it gets away. It can't <I>convince</I> anyone. It can't
counter rationalizations and denials. It can't <I>matter</I>. And
vampires—&quot; he paused—&quot;have poor communications
skills.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It should have been cause for petty, selfish rejoicing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;It all comes down to me,&quot; I said. &quot;That's what
you're saying. I'm a fucking stenographer, and it's all on me.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yes. Forgive me for that.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Forgive you?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti waved his hand. All faces save two disappeared.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I don't know what I'm doing.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The news bloomed across ConSensus a few seconds before Bates called
it aloud: Thirteen skimmers had not reappeared from behind Big Ben
on schedule. Sixteen. Twenty-eight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And counting.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked to himself as he and Bates played catch-up. Tactical
filled with luminous multicolored threads, a tangle of revised
projections as intricate as art. The threads wrapped Ben like a
filamentous cocoon; <I>Theseus</I> was a naked speck in the middle
distance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I expected any number of those lines to skewer us like needles
through a bug. Surprisingly, none did; but the projections only
extended twenty-five hours into the future, and were reliable for
only half that. Not even Sarasti and the Captain could look so far
ahead with that many balls in the air. It was something, though, the
faintest silver lining: that all these high-speed behemoths couldn't
simply reach out and swat us without warning. Evidently they still
had to ease into the curve.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
After <I>Rorschach</I>'s dive, I'd been starting to think the laws of
physics didn't apply.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The trajectories were close enough, though. At least three skimmers
would be passing within a hundred kilometers on their next orbits.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti reached for his injector, the blood rising in his face.
&quot;Time to go. We refit <I>Charybdis</I> while you're sulking.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He held the hypo to his throat and shot up. I stared at ConSensus,
caught by that bright shifting web like a moth by a streetlight.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Now</I>, Siri.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He pushed me from his quarters. I sailed into the passageway,
grabbed a convenient rung—and stopped.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The spine was alive with grunts, patrolling the airspace, standing
guard over the fab plants and shuttle 'locks, clinging like giant
insects to the rungs of unrolling spinal ladders. Slowly, silently,
the spine itself was <I>stretching</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It could do that, I remembered. Its corrugations flexed and relaxed
like muscle, it could grow up to two hundred meters to accommodate
any late-breaking need for a bigger hanger or more lab space.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Or more infantry. <I>Theseus</I> was increasing the size of the
battlefield.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Come.&quot; The vampire turned aft.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates broke in from up front. &quot;Something's happening.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
An emergency handpad, geckoed to the expanding bulkhead, slid past to
one side. Sarasti grabbed it and tapped commands. Bates' feed
appeared on the bulkhead: a tiny chunk of Big Ben, an EM-enhanced
equatorial quadrant only a few thousand klicks on a side. The
clouds boiled down there, a cyclonic knot of turbulence swirling
almost too fast for realtime. The overlay described charged
particles, bound in a deep Parker spiral. It spoke of great mass,
rising.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti clicked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;DTI?&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Optical only.&quot; Sarasti took my arm and dragged me
effortlessly astern. The display paced us along the bulkhead: seven
skimmers shot from the clouds as I watched, a ragged circle of
scramjets screaming red-hot into space. ConSensus plotted their
paths in an instant; luminous arcs rose around our ship like the bars
of a cage.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> shuddered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>We've been hit</I>, I thought. Suddenly the spine's plodding
expansion cranked into overdrive; the pleated wall lurched and
accelerated, streaming past my outstretched fingers as the closed
hatch receded up ahead—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—receded <I>overhead</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The walls weren't moving at all. We were <I>falling</I>, to the
sudden strident bleating of an alarm.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Something nearly yanked my arm from its socket: Sarasti had reached
out with one hand and caught a rung, reached with his other and
caught me before we'd both been flattened against the Fab plant. We
dangled. I must have weighed two hundred kilograms; the floor
shuddered ten meters below my feet. The ship groaned around us. The
spine filled with the screech of torquing metal. Bates' grunts
clung to its walls with clawed feet.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I reached for the ladder. The ladder pulled away: the ship was
bending in the middle and <I>down </I>had started to climb the walls.
Sarasti and I swung towards the center of the spine like a
daisy-chain pendulum.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Bates! James!</I>&quot; The vampire roared. His grip on
my wrist trembled, slipping. I strained for the ladder, swung,
caught it.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Susan James has barricaded herself in the bridge and shut down
autonomic overrides.&quot; An unfamiliar voice, flat and affectless.
&quot;She has initiated an unauthorized burn. I have begun a
controlled reactor shutdown; be advised that the main drive will be
offline for at least twenty-seven minutes.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>The ship</I>, I realized, its voice raised calmly above the alarm.
The Captain itself. On Public Address.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>That</I> was unusual.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Bridge!&quot; Sarasti barked. &quot;Open channel!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Someone was shouting up there. There were words, but I couldn't make
them out.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Without warning, Sarasti let go.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He dropped obliquely in a blur. Aft and opposite, the bulkhead
waited to swat him like an insect. In half a second both his legs
would be shattered, if the impact didn't kill him outright—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But suddenly we were weightless again, and Jukka
Sarasti—purple-faced, stiff-limbed— was foaming at the
mouth.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Reactor offline,&quot; the Captain reported. Sarasti bounced
off the wall.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>He's having a seizure</I>, I realized.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I released the ladder and pushed astern. <I>Theseus</I> swung
lopsidedly around me. Sarasti convulsed in mid-air; clicks and
hisses and choking sounds stuttered from his mouth. His eyes were so
wide they seemed lidless. His pupils were mirror-red pinpoints. The
flesh twitched across his face as though trying to crawl off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ahead and behind, battlebots held their position and ignored us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Bates</I>!&quot; I yelled up the spine. &quot;We need
help!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Angles, everywhere. Seams on the shield plates. Sharp shadows and
protrusions on the surface of every drone. A two-by-three matrix of
insets, bordered in black, floating over the main ConSensus display:
two big interlinked crosses right in front of where Sarasti had been
hanging.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>This can't be happening. He just took his antiEuclideans. I saw
him. Unless...</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Someone had spiked Sarasti's drugs.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Bates</I>!&quot; She should be linked into the grunts, they
should have leapt forward at the first sign of trouble. They should
be dragging my commander to the infirmary by now. They waited
stolid and immobile. I stared at the nearest: &quot;Bates, you
there?&quot; And then—in case she wasn't—I spoke to the
grunt directly. &quot;Are you autonomous? <I>Do you take verbal
orders</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
On all sides the robots watched; the Captain just laughed at me, its
voice posing as an alarm.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Infirmary</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I pushed. Sarasti's arms flailed randomly against my head and
shoulders. He tumbled forward and sideways, hit the moving ConSensus
display dead center, bounced away up the spine. I kicked off in his
wake—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and glimpsed something from the corner of my eye—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—and turned—</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
—And dead center of ConSensus, <I>Rorschach</I> erupted from
Ben's seething face like a breaching whale. It wasn't just the
EM-enhance: the thing was <I>glowing</I>, deep angry red. Enraged,
it hurled itself into space, big as a mountain range.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Fuck fuck fuck.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> lurched. The lights flickered, went out, came back on
again. The turning bulkhead cuffed me from behind.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Backups engaged,&quot; the Captain said calmly.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Captain! Sarasti's down!&quot; I kicked off the nearest
ladder, bumped into a grunt and headed forward after the vampire.
&quot;Bates isn't—what do I do?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Nav offline. Starboard afferents offline.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It wasn't even talking to me, I realized. Maybe this wasn't the
Captain at all. Maybe it was pure reflex: a dialog tree, spouting
public-service announcements. Maybe <I>Theseus</I> had already been
lobotomized. Maybe this was only her brain stem talking.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Darkness again. Then flickering light.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If the Captain was gone, we were screwed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I gave Sarasti another push. The alarm bleated on. The drum was
twenty meters ahead; BioMed was just the other side of that closed
hatch. The hatch had been open before, I remembered. Someone had
shut it in the last few minutes. Fortunately <I>Theseus</I> had no
locks on her doors.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Unless the Gang barricaded it before they took the bridge... </I>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Strap in, people! We are getting <I>out</I> of here!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Who in hell…?</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The open bridge channel. Susan James, shouting up there. Or <I>someone</I>
was; I couldn't quite place the voice...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Ten meters to the drum. <I>Theseus</I> jerked again, slowed her
spin. Stabilised.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Somebody start the goddamned reactor</I>! I've only got
attitude jets up here!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Susan? Sascha?</I>&quot; I was at the hatch. &quot;Who <I>is</I>
that?&quot; I pushed passed Sarasti and reached to open it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
No answer.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not from ConSensus, anyway. I heard a muted <I>hum</I> from behind,
saw the ominous shifting of shadows on the bulkhead just a moment too
late. I turned in time to see one of the grunts raise a spiky
appendage—curved like a scimitar, needle-tipped—over
Sarasti's head.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I turned in time to see it plunge into his skull.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I froze. The metal proboscis withdrew, dark and slick. Lateral
maxillipeds began nibbling at the base of Sarasti's skull. His
pithed corpse wasn't thrashing now; it only trembled, a sack of
muscles and motor nerves awash in static.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Bates</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her mutiny was underway. No, <I>their</I> mutiny—Bates and the
Gang. I'd known. I'd imagined it. I'd seen it coming.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He hadn't believed me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The lights went out again. The alarm fell silent. ConSensus
dwindled to a flickering doodle on the bulkhead and disappeared; I
saw something there in that last instant, and refused to process it.
I heard breath catch in my throat, felt angular monstrosities
advancing through the darkness. Something flared directly ahead, a
bright brief staccato in the void. I glimpsed curves and angles in
silhouette, <I>staggering</I>. The buzzing crackle of shorting
circuitry. Metal objects collided nearby, unseen.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
From behind the crinkle of the drum hatch, opening. A sudden beam of
harsh chemical light hit me as I turned, lit the mechanical ranks
behind; they simultaneously unclamped from their anchorages and
floated free. Their joints clicked in unison like an army stamping
to attention</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Keeton!</I>&quot; Bates snapped, sailing through the hatch.
&quot;You okay?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The chemlight shone from her forehead. It turned the interior of the
spine into a high-contrast mosaic, all pale surfaces and sharp moving
shadows. It spilled across the grunt that had killed Sarasti; the
robot bounced down the spine, suddenly, mysteriously inert. The
light washed across Sarasti's body. The corpse turned slowly on its
axis. Spherical crimson beads emerged from its head like drops of
water from a leaky faucet. They spread in a winding, widening trail,
spot-lit by Bates' headlamp: a spiral arm of dark ruby suns.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I backed away. &quot;You—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She pushed me to one side. &quot;Stay clear of the hatch, unless
you're going through.&quot; Her eyes were fixed on the ranked
drones. &quot;Optical line of sight.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Rows of glassy eyes reflected back at us down the passageway, passing
in and out of shadow.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You killed Sarasti!&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Who do you think shut it <I>down</I>, Keeton? The fucker went
rogue. I could barely even get it to self-destruct.&quot; Her eyes
went briefly deep-focus; all down the spine the surviving drones
launched into some intricate martial ballet, half-seen in the
shifting cone of her headlamp.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Better,&quot; Bates said. &quot;They should stay in line now.
Assuming we don't get hit with anything too much stronger.&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What <I>is</I> hitting us?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Lightning. EMP.&quot; Drones sailed down to Fab and the
shuttles, taking strategic positions along the tube. &quot;<I>Rorschach</I>'s
putting out one hell of a charge and every time one those skimmers
pass between us they <I>arc</I>.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What, at <I>this</I> range? I thought we were—the burn—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Sent us in the wrong direction. We're inbound.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Three grunts floated close enough to touch. They drew beads on the
open drum hatch.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She said she was trying to <I>escape</I>—&quot; I
remembered.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;She fucked up.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not by <I>that</I> much. She couldn't have.&quot; We were all
rated for manual piloting. Just in case.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Not the Gang,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;But—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I think there's someone new in there now. Bunch of submodules
wired together and woke up somehow, I don't know. But whatever's in
charge, I think it's just panicking.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Stuttering brightness on all sides. The spinal lightstrips flickered
and finally held steady, at half their usual brightness.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> coughed static and spoke: &quot;ConSensus is offline.
Reac—&quot;
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The voice faded.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>ConSensus</I>, I remembered as Bates turned to head back upstream.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;I saw something,&quot; I said. &quot;Before ConSensus went
out.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Yeah.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Was that—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She paused at the hatch. &quot;Yeah.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I'd seen scramblers. Hundreds of them, sailing naked through the
void, their arms spread wide.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Some of their arms, anyway. &quot;They were carrying—&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Bates nodded. &quot;Weapons.&quot; Her eyes flickered to some
unseen distance for a moment. &quot;First wave headed for the front
end. Blister and forward lock, I think. Second wave's aft.&quot;
She shook her head. &quot;Huh. I would have done it the other way
around.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;How far?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Far?&quot; Bates smiled faintly. &quot;They're already on the
hull, Siri. We're engaging.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What do I do? <I>What do I do?</I>&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Her eyes stared past me, and widened. She opened her mouth.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
A hand clamped on my shoulder from behind and spun me around.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti. His dead eyes stared from a skull split like a spiked
melon. Globules of coagulating blood clung to his hair and skin like
engorged ticks.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Go with him,&quot; Bates said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti grunted and clicked. There were no words.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;What—&quot; I began.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Now.</I> That's an order.&quot; Bates turned back to the
hatch. &quot;We'll cover you.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The shuttle. &quot;You too.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;No.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why not? They can fight better <I>without</I> you, you said
that yourself! What's the <I>point</I>?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Can't leave yourself a back door, Keeton. Defeats the whole
purpose.&quot; She allowed herself a small, sad smile. &quot;They've
breached. Go.&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
She was gone, fresh alarms rising in her wake. Far towards the bow I
heard the crinkle of emergency bulkheads snapping shut.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti's undead carcass gurgled and pushed me down the spine. Four
more grunts slid smoothly past and took up position behind us. I
looked over my shoulder in time to see the vampire pull the handpad
from the wall. But it wasn't Sarasti at all, of course. It was the
Captain—whatever was left of the Captain, this far into the
fight—commandeering a peripheral interface for its own use.
The optical port sprouted conspicuously from the back of Sarasti's
neck, where the cable used to go in; I remembered the drone's
maxillipeds, chewing.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The sound of weapons fire and ricochets rose behind us.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The corpse typed one-handed as we moved. I wondered briefly why it
just didn't <I>talk</I> before my gaze flickered back to the spike in
his brain: Sarasti's speech centers must be mush.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Why did you kill him?&quot; I said. A whole new alarm started
up, way back in the drum. A sudden <I>breeze</I> tugged me backward
for a moment, dissipated in the next second with a distant clang.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The corpse held out the handpad, configured for keys and a text
display: Seizng. Cldnt cntrl.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
We were at the shuttle locks. Robot soldiers let us pass, their
attention elsewhere.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
U go, the Captain said.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Someone screamed in the distance. Way off up the spine, the drum
hatch slammed shut; I turned and saw a pair of distant grunts welding
the seal. They seemed to move faster now than they ever had before.
Maybe it was only my imagination.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The starboard shuttle lock slid back. <I>Charybdis</I>' interior
lights winked on, spilling brightness into the passageway; the
spine's emergency lighting seemed even dimmer in contrast. I peered
through the opening. There was almost no cabin space left—just
a single open coffin jammed between coolant and fuel tanks and
massive retrofitted shockpads. <I>Charybdis</I> had been refitted
for high-G and long distance.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti's corpse urged me on from behind. I turned and faced it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;Was it <I>ever</I> him?&quot; I asked.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Go.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;<I>Tell me</I>. Did he ever speak for himself? Did he decide
<I>anything</I> on his own? Were we ever following <I>his </I>orders,
or was it just you all along?&quot;</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Sarasti's undead eyes stared glassy and uncomprehending. His fingers
jerked on the handpad.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
U dislke ordrs frm mchnes. Happier ths way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I let it strap me in and close the lid. I lay there in the dark,
feeling my body lurch and sway as the shuttle slid into its launch
slot. I withstood the sudden silence as the docking clamps let go,
the jerk of acceleration that spat me hard into the vacuum, the
ongoing thrust that pushed against my chest like a soft mountain.
Around me the shuttle trembled in the throes of a burn that far
exceeded its normative specs.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
My inlays came back online. Suddenly I could see <I>outside</I> if I
wanted. I could see what was happening behind me.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I chose not to, deliberately and fervently, and looked anyway.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> was dwindling by then, even on tactical. She listed
down the well, wobbling toward some enemy rendezvous that must have
been intentional, some last-second maneuver to get her payload as
close to target as possible. <I>Rorschach</I> rose to meet her, its
gnarled spiky arms <I>uncoiling</I>, spreading as if in anticipation
of an embrace. But it was the backdrop, not the players, that stole
the tableau: the face of Big Ben roiling in my rearview, a seething
cyclonic backdrop filling the window. Magnetic contours wound
spring-tight on the overlay; <I>Rorschach</I> was drawing all of
Ben's magnetosphere around itself like a bright swirling cloak,
twisting it into a concentrated knot that grew and brightened and
bulged outward...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Like a torsion flare from an L-class dwarf,</I> my commander had
said once, <I>but we should see anything big enough to generate that
effect and the sky's dark on that bearing. IAU calls it a
statistical artefact.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
As, in fact, it had been. An impact splash perhaps, or the bright
brief bellow of some great energy source rebooting after a million
years of dormancy. Much like this one: a solar flare, with no sun
beneath it. A magnetic cannon ten thousand times stronger than
nature gave it any right to be.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Both sides drew their weapons. I don't know which fired first, or
even if it mattered: how many tonnes of antimatter would it take to
match something that could squeeze the power of a sun from a gas ball
barely wider than Jupiter? Was <I>Rorschach</I> also resigned to
defeat, had each side opted for a kamikaze strike on the other?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I don't know. Big Ben got in the way just minutes before the
explosion. That's probably why I'm still alive. Ben stood between
me and that burning light like a coin held against the sun.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Theseus</I> sent everything it could, until the last microsecond.
Every recorded moment of hand-to-hand combat, every last countdown,
every last soul. All the moves and all the vectors. I have that
telemetry. I can break it down into any number of shapes, continuous
or discrete. I can transform the topology, rotate it and compress it
and serve it up in dialects that any ally might be able to use.
Perhaps Sarasti was right, perhaps some of it is vital.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I don't know what any of it means.</P>

<br><br><br><a name="Charybdis"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a><br><br><br>

<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Charybdis</H2>

<br><br><br>

<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif"><FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt">&quot;Species
used to go extinct. Now they go on hiatus.&quot;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; text-align:right;line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<FONT SIZE=2 STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">Deborah
MacLennan, <I>Tables of our Reconstruction</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
&quot;You poor guy,&quot; Chelsea said as we went our separate ways.
&quot;Sometimes I don't think you'll <I>ever</I> be lonely.&quot; At
the time I wondered why she sounded so sad.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Now, I only wish she'd been right.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I know this hasn't been a seamless narrative. I've had to shatter
the story and string its fragments out along a death lasting decades.
I live for only an hour of every ten thousand now, you see. I wish
I didn't have to. If only I could sleep the whole way back, avoid
the agony of these brief time-lapsed resurrections.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If only I wouldn't die in my sleep if I tried. But living bodies
glitter with a lifetime's accumulation of embedded radioisotopes,
brilliant little shards that degrade cellular machinery at the
molecular level. It's not usually a problem. Living cells repair
the damage as fast as it occurs. But my undead ones let those errors
accumulate over time, and the journey home takes so much longer than
the trip out: I lie in stasis and <I>corrode</I>. So the onboard
kick-starts me every now and then to give my flesh the chance to
stitch itself back together.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Occasionally it talks to me, recites system stats, updates me on any
chatter from back home. Mostly, though, it leaves me alone with my
thoughts and the machinery ticking away where my left hemisphere used
to be. So I talk to myself, dictate history and opinion from real
hemisphere to synthetic one: bright brief moments of awareness, long
years of oblivious decay between. Maybe the whole exercise is
pointless from the start, maybe no one's even listening.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It doesn't matter. This is what I <I>do</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So there you have it: a memoir told from meat to machinery. A tale
told to myself, for lack of someone else to take an interest.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Anyone with half a brain could tell it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I got a letter from Dad today. General delivery, he called it. I
think that was a joke, in deference to my lack of known address. He
just threw it omnidirectionally into the ether and hoped it would
wash over me, wherever I was.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
It's been almost fourteen years now. You lose track of such things
out here.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Helen's dead. Heaven—malfunctioned, apparently. Or was
sabotaged. Maybe the Realists finally pulled it off. I doubt it,
though. Dad seemed to think someone else was responsible. He didn't
offer up any details. Maybe he didn't know any. He spoke uneasily
of increasing unrest back home. Maybe someone leaked my communiqués
about <I>Rorschach</I>; maybe people drew the obvious conclusion when
our postcards stopped arriving. They don't know how the story ended.
The lack of closure must be driving them crazy.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I got the sense there was something else, something my father
didn't dare speak aloud. Maybe it's just my imagination; I thought
he even sounded troubled by the news that the birth rate was rising
again, which should be cause for celebration after a generation in
decline. If my Chinese Room was still in proper working order I'd
<I>know</I>, I'd be able to parse it down to the punctuation. But
Sarasti battered my tools and left them barely functional. I'm as
blind now as any baseline. All I have is uncertainty and suspicion,
and the creeping dread that even with my best tricks in tatters, I
might be reading him right.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I think he's warning me to stay away.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
He also said he loved me. He said he missed Helen, that she was
sorry for something she did before I was born, some indulgence or
omission that carried developmental consequences. He rambled. I
don't know what he was talking about. So much power my father must
have had, to be able to authorize such a broadcast and yet waste so
much of it on feelings.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Oh God, how I treasure it. I treasure every word.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I fall along an endless futile parabola, all gravity and inertia.
<I>Charybdis</I> couldn't reacquire the antimatter stream; Icarus
has either been knocked out of alignment or shut off entirely. I
suppose I could radio ahead and ask, but there's no hurry. I'm still
a long way out. It will be years before I even leave the comets
behind.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Besides, I'm not sure I want anyone to know where I am.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<I>Charybdis</I> doesn't bother with evasive maneuvers. There'd be
no point even if it had the fuel to spare, even if the enemy's still
out there somewhere. It's not as though they don't know where Earth
is.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I'm pretty sure the scramblers went up along with my own kin.
They played well. I admit it freely. Or maybe they just got lucky.
An accidental hiccough tickles Bates' grunt into firing on an unarmed
scrambler; weeks later, Stretch &amp; Clench use that body in the
course of their escape. Electricity and magnetism stir random
neurons in Susan's head; further down the timeline a whole new
persona erupts to take control, to send <I>Theseus</I> diving into
<I>Rorschach</I>'s waiting arms. Blind stupid random chance. Maybe
that's all it was.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I don't think so. Too many lucky coincidences. I think
<I>Rorschach</I> made its own luck, planted and watered that new
persona right under our noses, safely hidden—but for the merest
trace of elevated oxytocin— behind all the lesions and tumors
sewn in Susan's head. I think it looked ahead and saw the uses to
which a decoy might be put; I think it sacrificed a little piece of
itself in furtherance of that end, and made it look like an accident.
Blind maybe, but not luck. Foresight. Brilliant moves, and subtle.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not that most of us even knew the rules of the game, of course. We
were just pawns, really. Sarasti and the Captain—whatever
hybridized intelligence those two formed—they were the <I>real</I>
players. Looking back, I can see a few of their moves too. I see
<I>Theseus</I> hearing the scramblers tap back and forth in their
cages; I see her tweak the volume on the Gang's feed so that Susan
hears it too, and thinks the discovery her own. If I squint hard
enough, I even glimpse <I>Theseus</I> offering us up in sacrifice,
deliberately provoking <I>Rorschach</I> to retaliation with that
final approach. Sarasti was always enamored of data, especially when
it had <I>tactical significance</I>. What better way to assess one's
enemy than to observe it in combat?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
They never told us, of course. We were happier that way. We
disliked orders from machines. Not that we were all that crazy about
taking them from a vampire.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And now the game is over, and a single pawn stands on that scorched
board and its face is human after all. If the scramblers follow the
rules that a few generations of game theorists have laid out for
them, they won't be back. Even if they are, I suspect it won't make
any difference.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Because by then, there won't be any basis for conflict.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I've been listening to the radio during these intermittent
awakenings. It's been generations since we buried the Broadcast Age
in tightbeams and fiberop, but we never completely stopped sowing EM
throughout the heavens. Earth, Mars, and Luna conduct their
interplanetary trialog in a million overlapping voices. Every ship
cruising the void speaks in all directions at once. The O'Neils and
the asteroids never stopped singing. The Fireflies might never have
found us if they had.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I've heard those songs changing over time, a fast-forward time-lapse
into oblivion. Now it's mostly traffic control and telemetry. Every
now and then I still hear a burst of pure voice, tight with tension,
just short of outright panic more often than not: some sort of
pursuit in progress, a ship making the plunge into deep space, other
ships in dispassionate pursuit. The fugitives never seem to get very
far before their signals are cut off.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I can't remember the last time I heard music but I hear something
like it sometimes, eerie and discordant, full of familiar clicks and
pops. My brainstem doesn't like it. It scares my brainstem to
death.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I remember my whole generation abandoning the real world for a
bootstrapped Afterlife. I remember someone saying <I>Vampires don't
go to Heaven</I>. They see the pixels. Sometimes I wonder how I'd
feel, brought back from the peace of the grave to toil at the
pleasure of simpleminded creatures who had once been no more than
protein. I wonder how I'd feel if my disability had been used to
keep me leashed and denied my rightful place in the world.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
And then I wonder what it would be like to feel nothing at all, to be
an utterly rational, predatory creature with meat putting itself so
eagerly to sleep on all sides...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0; text-align: center">
*</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I can't miss Jukka Sarasti. God knows I try, every time I come
online. He saved my life. He — humanized me. I'll always owe
him for that, for however long I live; and for however long I live
I'll never stop hating him for the same reason. In some sick
surrealistic way I had more in common with Sarasti than I did with
any human.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
But I just don't have it in me. He was a predator and I was prey,
and it's not in the nature of the lamb to mourn the lion. Though he
died for our sins, I cannot miss Jukka Sarasti.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I can empathize with him, though. At long long last I can empathise,
with Sarasti, with all his extinct kind. Because we humans were
never meant to inherit the Earth. Vampires were. They must have
been sentient to some degree, but that semi-aware dream state would
have been a rudimentary thing next to our own self-obsession. They
were weeding it out. It was just a phase. They were on their way.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
The thing is, humans can look at crosses without going into
convulsions. That's evolution for you; one stupid linked mutation
and the whole natural order falls apart, intelligence and
self-awareness stuck in counterproductive lock-step for half a
million years. I think I know what's happening back on Earth, and
though some might call it genocide it isn't really. We did it to
ourselves. You can't blame predators for being predators. We were
the ones who brought them back, after all. Why <I>wouldn't</I> they
reclaim their birthright?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
Not genocide. Just the righting of an ancient wrong.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
I've tried to take some comfort in that. It's—difficult.
Sometimes it seems as though my whole life's been a struggle to
reconnect, to regain whatever got lost when my parents killed their
only child. Out in the Oort, I finally won that struggle. Thanks to
a vampire and a boatload of freaks and an invading alien horde, I'm
Human again. Maybe the last Human. By the time I get home, I could
be the only sentient being in the universe.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
If I'm even that much. Because I don't know if there is such a thing
as a reliable narrator. And Cunningham said zombies would be pretty
good at faking it.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
So I can't really tell you, one way or the other.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
You'll just have to imagine you're Siri Keeton.</P>

<br><br><br><a name="Acknowledgments"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a><br><br><br>
<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; line-height: 100%; page-break-before: always">
Acknowledgments</H2>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<I>Blindsight</I> is my first novel-length foray into deep space—a
domain in which I have, shall we say, limited formal education. In
that sense this book isn't far removed from my earlier novels: but
whereas I may have not known much about deep sea ecology either, most
of you knew even less, and a doctorate in marine biology at least let
me fake it through the rifters trilogy. <I>Blindsight</I>, however,
charts its course through a whole different kind of zero gee; this
made a trustworthy guide that much more important. So first let me
thank Prof. Jaymie Matthews of the University of British Columbia:
astronomer, partygoer, and vital serial sieve for all the ideas I
threw at him. Let me also thank Donald Simmons, aerospace engineer
and gratifyingly-cheap dinner date, who reviewed my specs for <I>Theseus</I>
(especially of the drive and the Drum), and gave me tips on radiation
and the shielding therefrom. Both parties patiently filtered out my
more egregious boners. (Which is not to say that none remain in this
book, only that those which do result from my negligence, not theirs.
Or maybe just because the story called for them.)
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
David Hartwell, as always, was my editor and main point man at Evil
Empire HQ. I suspect <I>Blindsight </I>was a tough haul for both of
us: shitloads of essential theory threatened to overwhelm the story,
not to mention the problem of generating reader investment in a cast
of characters who were less cuddlesome than usual. I still don't
know the extent to which I succeeded or failed, but I've never been
more grateful that the man riding shotgun had warmed up on everyone
from Heinlein to Herbert.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The usual gang of fellow writers critiqued the first few chapters of
this book and sent me whimpering back to the drawing board: Michael
Carr, Laurie Channer, Cory Doctorow, Rebecca Maines, David Nickle,
John McDaid, Steve Samenski, Rob Stauffer and the late Pat York. All
offered valuable insights and criticisms at our annual island
getaway; Dave Nickle gets singled out for special mention thanks to
additional insights offered throughout the year, generally at ungodly
hours. By the same token, Dave is exempted from the familiar
any-errors-are-entirely-mine schtick that we authors boilerplate onto
our Acknowledgements. At least some of the mistakes contained herein
are probably Dave's fault.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Profs. Dan Brooks and Deborah MacLennan, both of the University of
Toronto, provided the intellectual stimulation of an academic
environment without any of the political and bureaucratic bullshit
that usually goes along with it. I am indebted to them for litres of
alcohol and hours of discussion on a number of the issues presented
herein, and for other things that are none of your fucking business.
Also in the too-diverse-to-itemise category, André Breault
provided a west-coast refuge in which I completed the first draft.
Isaac Szpindel—the <I>real</I> one&shy;— helped out, as
usual, with various neurophys details, and Susan James (who also
really exists, albeit in a slightly more coherent format) told me how
linguists might approach a First Contact scenario. Lisa Beaton
pointed me to relevant papers in a forlorn attempt to atone for
whoring her soul to Big Pharma. Laurie Channer acted as general
sounding board, and, well, put up with me. For a while, anyway.
Thanks also to Karl Schroeder, with whom I batted around a number of
ideas in the arena of sentience-vs.-intelligence. Parts of
<I>Blindsight</I> can be thought of as a rejoinder to arguments
presented in Karl's novel <I>Permanence</I>; I disagree with his
reasoning at almost every step, and am still trying to figure out how
we arrived at the same general endpoint.</P>

<br><br><br><a name="Notes"><hr width="100%" color="#00000"></a><br><br><br>

<H2 LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:right; line-height: 100%">
Notes and References</H2>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
References and remarks, to try and convince you all I'm not crazy
(or, failing that, to simply intimidate you into shutting up about
it). Read for extra credit.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%">
<B>A Brief Primer on Vampire Biology</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
I'm hardly the first author to take a stab at rationalising vampirism
in purely biological terms. Richard Matheson did it before I was
born, and if the grapevine's right that damn Butler woman's latest
novel will be all over the same territory before you even read this.
I bet I'm the first to come up with the Crucifix Glitch to explain
the aversion to crosses, though— and once struck by that bit of
inspiration, everything else followed.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Vampires were accidentally rediscovered when a form of experimental
gene therapy went curiously awry, kick-starting long-dormant genes in
an autistic child and provoking a series of (ultimately fatal)
physical and neurological changes. The company responsible for this
discovery presented its findings after extensive follow-up studies on
inmates of the Texas penal system; a recording of that talk, complete
with visual aids, is available online<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote1anc" HREF="#sdfootnote1sym"><SUP>1</SUP></A></SUP>;
curious readers with half an hour to kill are refered there for
details not only on vampire biology, but on the research, funding,
and &quot;ethical and political concerns&quot; regarding vampire
domestication (not to mention the ill-fated &quot;Taming Yesterday's
Nightmares For A Brighter Tomorrow&quot; campaign). The following
(much briefer) synopsis restricts itself to a few biological
characteristics of the ancestral organism:</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<I>Homo sapiens vampiris</I> was a short-lived Human subspecies which
diverged from the ancestral line between 800,000 and 500,000 year BP.
More gracile than either <I>neandertal</I> or <I>sapiens</I>, gross
physical divergence from <I>sapiens</I> included slight elongation of
canines, mandibles, and long bones in service of an increasingly
predatory lifestyle. Due to the relatively brief lifespan of this
lineage, these changes were not extensive and overlapped considerably
with conspecific allometries; differences become diagnostically
significant only at large sample sizes (N&gt;130).</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF4"></A><A NAME="_Ref110222656"></A>
However, while virtually identical to modern humans in terms of gross
physical morphology, <I>vampiris</I> was radically divergent from
<I>sapiens</I> on the biochemical, neurological, and soft-tissue
levels. The GI tract was foreshortened and secreted a distinct range
of enzymes more suited to a carnivorous diet. Since cannibalism
carries with it a high risk of prionic infection<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote2anc" HREF="#sdfootnote2sym"><SUP>2</SUP></A></SUP>,
the vampire immune system displayed great resistance to prion
diseases<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote3anc" HREF="#sdfootnote3sym"><SUP>3</SUP></A></SUP>,
as well as to a variety of helminth and anasakid parasites. <I>Vampiris</I>
hearing and vision were superior to that of <I>sapiens</I>; vampire
retinas were quadrochromatic (containing four types of cones,
compared to only three among baseline humans); the fourth cone type,
common to nocturnal predators ranging from cats to snakes, was tuned
to near-infrared. Vampire grey matter was &quot;underconnected&quot;
compared to Human norms due to a relative lack of interstitial white
matter; this forced isolated cortical modules to become
self-contained and hypereffective, leading to omnisavantic
pattern-matching and analytical skills<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote4anc" HREF="#sdfootnote4sym"><SUP>4</SUP></A></SUP>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Virtually all of these adaptations are cascade effects that—
while resulting from a variety of proximate causes— can
ultimately be traced back to a paracentric inversion mutation on the
Xq21.3 block of the X-chromosome<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote5anc" HREF="#sdfootnote5sym"><SUP>5</SUP></A></SUP>.
This resulted in functional changes to genes coding for
protocadherins (proteins that play a critical role in brain and
central nervous system development). While this provoked radical
neurological and behavioral changes, significant <I>physical </I>changes
were limited to soft tissue and microstructures that do not
fossilise. This, coupled with extremely low numbers of vampire even
at peak population levels (existing as they did at the tip of the
trophic pyramid) explains their virtual absence from the fossil
record.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Significant deleterious effects also resulted from this cascade. For
example, vampires lost the ability to code for <FONT FACE="Symbol, serif">&#61541;</FONT>-Protocadherin
Y, whose genes are found exclusively on the hominid Y chromosome<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote6anc" HREF="#sdfootnote6sym"><SUP>6</SUP></A></SUP>.
Unable to synthesise this vital protein themselves, vampires had to
obtain it from their food. Human prey thus comprised an essential
component of their diet, but a relatively slow-breeding one (a unique
situation, since prey usually outproduce their predators by at least
an order of magnitude). Normally this dynamic would be utterly
unsustainable: vampires would predate humans to extinction, and then
die off themselves for lack of essential nutrients.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Extended periods of lungfish-like dormancy<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote7anc" HREF="#sdfootnote7sym"><SUP>7</SUP></A></SUP>
(the so-called &quot;undead&quot; state)—and the consequent
drastic reduction in vampire energetic needs— developed as a
means of redressing this imbalance. To this end vampires produced
elevated levels of endogenous Ala-(D) Leuenkephalin (a mammalian
hibernation-inducing peptide<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote8anc" HREF="#sdfootnote8sym"><SUP>8</SUP></A></SUP>)
and dobutamine, which strengthens the heart muscle during periods on
inactivity<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote9anc" HREF="#sdfootnote9sym"><SUP>9</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Another deleterious cascade effect was the so-called &quot;Crucifix
Glitch&quot;— a cross-wiring of normally-distinct receptor
arrays in the visual cortex<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote10anc" HREF="#sdfootnote10sym"><SUP>10</SUP></A></SUP>,
resulting in <I>grand mal</I>-like feedback siezures whenever the
arrays processing vertical and horizontal stimuli fired
simultaneously across a sufficiently large arc of the visual field.
Since intersecting right angles are virtually nonexistent in nature,
natural selection did not weed out the Glitch until <I>H. sapiens
sapiens</I> developed Euclidean architecture; by then, the trait had
become fixed across <I>H. sapiens vampiris</I> via genetic drift,
and—suddenly denied access to its prey—the entire
subspecies went extinct shortly after the dawn of recorded history.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
You'll have noticed that Jukka Sarasti, like all reconstructed
vampires, sometimes <I>clicked</I> to himself when thinking. This is
thought to hail from an ancestral language, which was hardwired into
a click-speech mode more than 50,000 years BP. Click-based speech is
especially suited to predators stalking prey on savannah grasslands
(the clicks mimic the rustling of grasses, allowing communication
without spooking quarry)<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote11anc" HREF="#sdfootnote11sym"><SUP>11</SUP></A></SUP>.
The Human language most closely akin to Old Vampire is Hadzane<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote12anc" HREF="#sdfootnote12sym"><SUP>12</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<B>Sleight of Mind</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The Human sensorium is remarkably easy to hack; our visual system has
been described as an improvised &quot;bag of tricks&quot;<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote13anc" HREF="#sdfootnote13sym"><SUP>13</SUP></A></SUP>
at best. Our sense organs acquire such fragmentary, imperfect input
that the brain has to interpret their data using rules of probability
rather than direct perception<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote14anc" HREF="#sdfootnote14sym"><SUP>14</SUP></A></SUP>.
It doesn't so much <I>see</I> the world as make an educated guess
about it. As a result, &quot;improbable&quot; stimuli tends to go
unprocessed at the conscious level, no matter how strong the input.
We tend to simply <I>ignore</I> sights and sound that don't fit with
our worldview.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Sarasti was right: <I>Rorschach</I> wouldn't do anything to you that
you don't already do to yourself.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
For example, the invisibility trick of that young, dumb scrambler—
the one who restricted its movement to the gaps in Human vision—
occured to me while reading about something called <I>inattentional
blindness</I>. A Russian guy called Yarbus was the first to figure
out the whole saccadal glitch in Human vision, back in the nineteen
sixties<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote15anc" HREF="#sdfootnote15sym"><SUP>15</SUP></A></SUP>.
Since then, a variety of researchers have made objects pop in and
out of the visual field unnoticed, conducted conversations with
hapless subjects who never realised that their conversational partner
had changed halfway through the interview, and generally proven that
the Human brain just <I>fails to notice</I> an awful lot of what's
going on around it<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote16anc" HREF="#sdfootnote16sym"><SUP>16</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote17anc" HREF="#sdfootnote17sym"><SUP>17</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote18anc" HREF="#sdfootnote18sym"><SUP>18</SUP></A></SUP>.
Check out the demos at the website of the Visual Cognition Lab at
the University of Illinois<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote19anc" HREF="#sdfootnote19sym"><SUP>19</SUP></A></SUP>
and you'll see what I mean. This really is rather mind-blowing,
people. There could be Scientologists walking among us right now and
if they moved just right, we'd <I>never even see them</I>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF20"></A><A NAME="_Ref110001202"></A><A NAME="_RefF21"></A><A NAME="_Ref110001232"></A><A NAME="_RefF22"></A><A NAME="_Ref110001245"></A>
Most of the psychoses, syndromes, and hallucinations described herein
are real, and are described in detail by Metzinger<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote20anc" HREF="#sdfootnote20sym"><SUP>20</SUP></A></SUP>,
Wegner<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote21anc" HREF="#sdfootnote21sym"><SUP>21</SUP></A></SUP>,
and/or Saks<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote22anc" HREF="#sdfootnote22sym"><SUP>22</SUP></A></SUP>
(see also <I>Sentience/Intelligence, </I>below<I>)</I>. Others (<I>e.g.</I>
Grey Syndrome) have not yet made their way into the DSM<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote23anc" HREF="#sdfootnote23sym"><SUP>23</SUP></A></SUP>—truth
be told, I invented a couple— but are nonetheless based on
actual experimental evidence. Depending upon whom you believe, the
judicious application of magnetic fields to the brain can provoke
everything from religious rapture<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote24anc" HREF="#sdfootnote24sym"><SUP>24</SUP></A></SUP>
to a sense of being abducted by aliens<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote25anc" HREF="#sdfootnote25sym"><SUP>25</SUP></A></SUP>.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation can change mood, induce
blindness<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote26anc" HREF="#sdfootnote26sym"><SUP>26</SUP></A></SUP>,
or target the speech centers (making one unable to pronounce verbs,
for example, while leaving the nouns unimpaired)<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote27anc" HREF="#sdfootnote27sym"><SUP>27</SUP></A></SUP>.
Memory and learning can be enhanced (or impaired), and the US
Government is presently funding research into wearable TMS gear
for—you guessed it— military purposes<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote28anc" HREF="#sdfootnote28sym"><SUP>28</SUP></A></SUP>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Sometimes electrical stimulation of the brain induces &quot;alien
hand syndrome&quot;— the involuntary movement of the body
against the will of the &quot;person&quot; allegedly in control<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote29anc" HREF="#sdfootnote29sym"><SUP>29</SUP></A></SUP>.
Other times it provokes equally involuntary movements, which
subjects nonetheless insist they &quot;chose&quot; to perform despite
overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote30anc" HREF="#sdfootnote30sym"><SUP>30</SUP></A></SUP><I>.
</I>Put all this together with the fact that the body begins to act
before the brain even &quot;decides&quot; to move<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote31anc" HREF="#sdfootnote31sym"><SUP>31</SUP></A></SUP>
(but see<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote32anc" HREF="#sdfootnote32sym"><SUP>32</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote33anc" HREF="#sdfootnote33sym"><SUP>33</SUP></A></SUP>),
and the whole concept of <I>free will</I>—despite the
undeniable subjective <I>feeling</I> that it's real—begins to
look a teeny bit silly, even outside the influence of alien
artefacts.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
While electromagnetic stimulation is currently the most trendy
approach to hacking the brain, it's hardly the only one. Gross
physical disturbances ranging from tumors<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote34anc" HREF="#sdfootnote34sym"><SUP>34</SUP></A></SUP>
to tamping irons<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote35anc" HREF="#sdfootnote35sym"><SUP>35</SUP></A></SUP>
can turn normal people into psychopaths and pedophiles (hence that
new persona sprouting in Susan James's head). Spirit possession and
rapture can be induced through the sheer emotional bump-and-grind of
religious rituals, using no invasive neurological tools at all (and
not even necessarily any pharmacological ones)<SUP>21</SUP>. People
can even develop a sense of ownership of body parts that aren't
theirs, can be convinced that a rubber hand is their real one<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote36anc" HREF="#sdfootnote36sym"><SUP>36</SUP></A></SUP>.
Vision trumps propioreception: a prop limb, subtly manipulated, is
enough to convince us that we're doing one thing while in fact we're
doing something else entirely<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote37anc" HREF="#sdfootnote37sym"><SUP>37</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote38anc" HREF="#sdfootnote38sym"><SUP>38</SUP></A></SUP>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The latest tool in this arsenal is ultrasound: less invasive than
electromagnetics, more precise than charismatic revival, it can be
used to boot up brain activity<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote39anc" HREF="#sdfootnote39sym"><SUP>39</SUP></A></SUP>
without any of those pesky electrodes or magnetic hairnets. In
<I>Blindsight</I> it serves as a convenient back door to explain why
<I>Rorschach</I>'s hallucinations persist even in the presence of
Faraday shielding— but in the here and now, Sony has been
renewing an annual patent for a machine which uses ultrasonics to
implant &quot;sensory experiences&quot; directly into the brain<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote40anc" HREF="#sdfootnote40sym"><SUP>40</SUP></A></SUP>.
They're calling it an entertainment device with massive applications
for online gaming. Uh huh. And if you can implant sights and sounds
into someone's head from a distance, why not implant political
beliefs and the irresistable desire for a certain brand of beer while
you're at it?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<B>Are We There Yet?</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The &quot;telematter&quot; drive that gets our characters to the
story is based on teleportation studies reported in <I>Nature</I><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote41anc" HREF="#sdfootnote41sym"><SUP>41</SUP></A></SUP>,
<I>Science,</I><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote42anc" HREF="#sdfootnote42sym"><SUP>42</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote43anc" HREF="#sdfootnote43sym"><SUP>43</SUP></A></SUP>
<I>Physical Review Letters</I><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote44anc" HREF="#sdfootnote44sym"><SUP>44</SUP></A></SUP>,
and (more recently) everyone and their dog<SUP>e.g., </SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote45anc" HREF="#sdfootnote45sym"><SUP>45</SUP></A></SUP>.
The idea of transmitting antimatter specs as a fuel template is, so
far as I know, all mine. To derive plausible guesses for <I>Theseus</I>'s
fuel mass, accelleration, and travel time I resorted to The
Relativistic Rocket<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote46anc" HREF="#sdfootnote46sym"><SUP>46</SUP></A></SUP>,
maintained by the mathematical physicist John Baez at UC Riverside.
<I>Theseus</I>' use of magnetic fields as radiation shielding is
based on research out of MIT<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote47anc" HREF="#sdfootnote47sym"><SUP>47</SUP></A></SUP>.
I parked the (solar powered) Icarus Array right next to the sun
because the production of antimatter is likely to remain an extremely
energy-expensive process for the near future<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote48anc" HREF="#sdfootnote48sym"><SUP>48</SUP></A>,
<A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote49anc" HREF="#sdfootnote49sym"><SUP>49</SUP></A></SUP>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The undead state in which <I>Theseus </I>carries her crew is, of
course, another iteration of the venerable suspended animation riff
(although I'd like to think I've broken new ground by invoking
vampire physiology as the mechanism). Two recent studies have put
the prospect of induced hibernation closer to realization.
Blackstone <I>et al</I>. have induced hibernation in mice by the
astonishingly-simple expedient of exposing them to hydrogen sulfide<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote50anc" HREF="#sdfootnote50sym"><SUP>50</SUP></A></SUP>;
this gums up their cellular machinery enough to reduce metabolism by
90%. More dramatically (and invasively), researchers at Safar Center
for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh claim<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote51anc" HREF="#sdfootnote51sym"><SUP>51</SUP></A></SUP>
to have resurrected a dog three hours after clinical death, via a
technique in which the animal's blood supply was replaced by an
ice-cold saline solution<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote52anc" HREF="#sdfootnote52sym"><SUP>52</SUP></A></SUP>.
Of these techniques, the first is probably closer to what I
envisioned, although I'd finished the first draft before either
headline broke. I considered rejigging my crypt scenes to include
mention of hydrogen sulfide, but ultimately decided that fart jokes
would have ruined the mood.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-before: always">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%">
<B>The Game Board</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<I>Blindsight</I> describes Big Ben as an &quot;Oasa Emitter&quot;.
Officially there's no such label, but Yumiko Oasa has reported
finding hitherto-undocumented infrared emitters<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote53anc" HREF="#sdfootnote53sym"><SUP>53</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote54anc" HREF="#sdfootnote54sym"><SUP>54</SUP></A></SUP>
— dimmer than brown dwarves, but possibly more common<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote55anc" HREF="#sdfootnote55sym"><SUP>55</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote56anc" HREF="#sdfootnote56sym"><SUP>56</SUP></A></SUP>
ranging in mass from three to thirteen Jovian masses. My story
needed something relatively local, large enough to sustain a
superJovian magnetic field, but small and dim enough to plausibly
avoid discovery for the next seventy or eighty years. Oasa's
emitters suit my needs reasonably well (notwithstanding some evident
skepticism over whether they actually exist<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote57anc" HREF="#sdfootnote57sym"><SUP>57</SUP></A></SUP>).</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Of course I had to extrapolate on the details, given how little is
actually known about these beasts. To this end I pilfered data from
a variety of sources on gas giants<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote58anc" HREF="#sdfootnote58sym"><SUP>58</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote59anc" HREF="#sdfootnote59sym"><SUP>59</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote60anc" HREF="#sdfootnote60sym"><SUP>60</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote61anc" HREF="#sdfootnote61sym"><SUP>61</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote62anc" HREF="#sdfootnote62sym"><SUP>62</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote63anc" HREF="#sdfootnote63sym"><SUP>63</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote64anc" HREF="#sdfootnote64sym"><SUP>64</SUP></A></SUP>
and/or brown dwarves<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote65anc" HREF="#sdfootnote65sym"><SUP>65</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote66anc" HREF="#sdfootnote66sym"><SUP>66</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote67anc" HREF="#sdfootnote67sym"><SUP>67</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote68anc" HREF="#sdfootnote68sym"><SUP>68</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote69anc" HREF="#sdfootnote69sym"><SUP>69</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote70anc" HREF="#sdfootnote70sym"><SUP>70</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote71anc" HREF="#sdfootnote71sym"><SUP>71</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote72anc" HREF="#sdfootnote72sym"><SUP>72</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
, </SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote73anc" HREF="#sdfootnote73sym"><SUP>73</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote74anc" HREF="#sdfootnote74sym"><SUP>74</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote75anc" HREF="#sdfootnote75sym"><SUP>75</SUP></A></SUP>,
scaling up or down as appropriate. From a distance, the firing of
<I>Rorschach</I>'s ultimate weapon looks an awful lot like the
supermassive x-ray and radio flare recently seen erupting from a
brown dwarf that should have been way too small to pull off such a
trick<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote76anc" HREF="#sdfootnote76sym"><SUP>76</SUP></A></SUP>.
That flare lasted twelve hours, was a good billions times as strong
as anything Jupiter ever put out, and is thought to have resulted
from a twisted magnetic field<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote77anc" HREF="#sdfootnote77sym"><SUP>77</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Burns-Caulfield is based loosely on 2000 Cr<SUB>105</SUB>, a
trans-Newtonian comet whose present orbit cannot be completely
explained by the gravitational forces of presently-known objects in
the solar system<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote78anc" HREF="#sdfootnote78sym"><SUP>78</SUP></A></SUP>.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<B>Scrambler Anatomy and Physiology</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Like many others, I am weary of humanoid aliens with bumpy foreheads,
and of giant CGI insectoids that may <I>look</I> alien but who act
like rabid dogs in chitin suits. Of course, difference for its own
arbitrary sake is scarcely better than your average saggital-crested
Roddennoid; natural selection is as ubiquitous as life itself, and
the same basic processes will end up shaping life wherever it
evolves. The challenge is thus to create an &quot;alien&quot; that
truly lives up to the word, while remaining biologically plausible.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Scramblers are my first shot at meeting that challenge— and
given how much they resemble the brittle stars found in earthly seas,
I may have crapped out on the whole unlike-anything-you've-ever-seen
front, at least in terms of gross morphology. It turns out that
brittle stars even have something akin to the scrambler's distributed
eyespot array. Similarly, scrambler reproduction— the budding
of stacked newborns off a common stalk— takes its lead from
jellyfish. You can take the marine biologist out of the ocean,
but...</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF81"></A><A NAME="_Ref109734132"></A>
Fortunately, scramblers become more alien the closer you look at
them. Cunningham remarks that nothing like their time-sharing
motor/sensory pathways exists on Earth. He's right as far as he
goes, but I can cite a precursor that might conceivably evolve into
such an arrangement. Our own &quot;mirror neurons&quot; fire not
only when we perform an action, but when we observe someone else
performing the same action<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote79anc" HREF="#sdfootnote79sym"><SUP>79</SUP></A></SUP>;
this characteristic has been cited in the evolution of both language
and of consciousness<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote80anc" HREF="#sdfootnote80sym"><SUP>80</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote81anc" HREF="#sdfootnote81sym"><SUP>81</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote82anc" HREF="#sdfootnote82sym"><SUP>82</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Things look even more alien on the metabolic level. Here on Earth
anything that relied solely on anaerobic ATP production never got
past the single-cell stage. Even though it's more efficient than our
own oxygen-burning pathways, anaerobic metabolism is just too damn
<I>slow</I> for advanced multicellularity<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote83anc" HREF="#sdfootnote83sym"><SUP>83</SUP></A></SUP>.
Cunningham's proposed solution is simplicity itself. The catch is,
you have to sleep for a few thousand years between shifts.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The idea of quantum-mechanical metabolic processes may sound even
wonkier, but it's not. Wave-particle duality can exert significant
impacts on biochemical reactions under physiological conditions at
room temperature<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote84anc" HREF="#sdfootnote84sym"><SUP>84</SUP></A></SUP>;
heavy-atom carbon tunnelling has been reported to speed up the rate
of such reactions by as much as 152 <I>orders of magnitude</I><SUP><I><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote85anc" HREF="#sdfootnote85sym"><SUP>85</SUP></A></I></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
And how's <I>this</I> for alien: <I>no genes</I>. The honeycomb
example I used by way of analogy originally appeared in Darwin's
little-known treatise<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote86anc" HREF="#sdfootnote86sym"><SUP>86</SUP></A></SUP><I>
</I>(<I>damn</I> but I've always wanted to cite that guy); more
recently, a small but growing group of biologists have begun
spreading the word that nucleic acids (in particular) and genes (in
general) have been seriously overrated as prerequisites to life<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote87anc" HREF="#sdfootnote87sym"><SUP>87</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote88anc" HREF="#sdfootnote88sym"><SUP>88</SUP></A></SUP>.
A great deal of biological complexity arises not because of genetic
programming, but through the sheer physical and chemical interaction
of its components<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote89anc" HREF="#sdfootnote89sym"><SUP>89</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,</SUP>
<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote90anc" HREF="#sdfootnote90sym"><SUP>90</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,</SUP>
<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote91anc" HREF="#sdfootnote91sym"><SUP>91</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,</SUP>
<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote92anc" HREF="#sdfootnote92sym"><SUP>92</SUP></A></SUP>.
Of course, you still need something to set up the initial conditions
for those processes to emerge; that's where the magnetic fields come
in. No candy-ass string of nucleotides would survive in <I>Rorschach</I>'s
environment anyway.
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The curious nitpicker might be saying &quot;Yeah, but without genes
how do these guys <I>evolve</I>? How to they adapt to novel
environments? How, as a species, do they cope with the <I>unexpected</I>?&quot;
And if Robert Cunningham were here today, he might say, &quot;I'd
swear half the immune system is actively targetting the other half.
It's not just the immune system, either. Parts of the nervous system
seem to be trying to, well, hack each other. I think they evolve
<I>intraorganismally</I>, as insane as that sounds. The whole
organism's at war with itself on the tissue level, it's got some kind
of cellular Red Queen thing happening. Like setting up a colony of
interacting tumors, and counting on fierce competition to keep any
one of them from getting out of hand. Seems to serve the same role
as sex and mutation does for us.&quot; And if you rolled your eyes at
all that doubletalk, he might just blow smoke in your face and refer
to one immunologist's interpretation of exactly those concepts, as
exemplified in (of all things) <I>The Matrix Revolutions</I><SUP><I><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote93anc" HREF="#sdfootnote93sym"><SUP>93</SUP></A></I></SUP>
. He might also point out that that the synaptic connections of your
own brain are shaped by a similar kind of intraorganismal natural
selection<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote94anc" HREF="#sdfootnote94sym"><SUP>94</SUP></A></SUP>,
one catalysed by bits of parasitic DNA called <I>retrotransposons.</I></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Cunningham actually did say something like that in an earlier draft
of this book, but the damn thing was getting so weighed down with
theorising that I just cut it. After all, <I>Rorschach</I> is the
proximate architect of these things, so it could handle all that
stuff even if individual scramblers couldn't. And one of
<I>Blindsight</I>'s take-home messages is that life is a matter of
<I>degree</I>—the distinction between living and non-living
systems has always been an iffy one<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote95anc" HREF="#sdfootnote95sym"><SUP>95</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote96anc" HREF="#sdfootnote96sym"><SUP>96</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote97anc" HREF="#sdfootnote97sym"><SUP>97</SUP></A></SUP>,
never more so than in the bowels of that pain-in-the-ass artefact out
in the Oort.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid"><A NAME="here"></A>
<B>Sentience/Intelligence</B></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%; page-break-after: avoid">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF98"></A><A NAME="_Ref109735557"></A>
This is the heart of the whole damn exercise. Let's get the biggies
out of the way first. Metzinger's <I>Being No One<SUP>20</SUP></I>
is the toughest book I've ever read (and there are still significant
chunks of it I haven't), but it also contains some of the most
mindblowing ideas I've encountered in fact or fiction. Most authors
are shameless bait-and-switchers when it comes to the nature of
consciousness. Pinker calls his book <I>How the Mind Works</I><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote98anc" HREF="#sdfootnote98sym"><SUP>98</SUP></A></SUP>,
then admits on page one that &quot;We don't understand how the mind
works&quot;. Koch (the guy who coined the term &quot;zombie agents&quot;)
writes <I>The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach</I><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote99anc" HREF="#sdfootnote99sym"><SUP>99</SUP></A></SUP>,
in which he sheepishly sidesteps the whole issue of why neural
activity should result in any kind of subjective awareness
whatsoever.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Towering above such pussies, Metzinger takes the bull by the balls.
His &quot;World-zero&quot; hypothesis not only explains the
subjective sense of self, but also why such an illusory first-person
narrator would be an emergent property of certain cognitive systems
in the first place. I have no idea whether he's right— the
man's way beyond me— but at least he addressed the <I>real</I>
question that keeps us staring at the ceiling at three a.m., long
after the last roach is spent. Many of the syndromes and maladies
dropped into <I>Blindsight </I>I first encountered in Metzinger's
book. Any uncited claims or statements in this subsection probably
hail from that source.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
If they don't, then maybe they hail from Wegner's <I>The Illusion of
Conscious Will<SUP>21</SUP></I> instead. Less ambitious, far more
accessible, Wegner's book doesn't so much deal with the nature of
<I>consciousness</I> as it does with the nature of <I>free will</I>,
which Wegner thumbnails as &quot;our mind's way of estimating what it
thinks it did.&quot;. Wegner presents his own list of syndromes and
maladies, all of which reinforce the mind-boggling sense of what
fragile and subvertible machines we are. And of course, Oliver
Saks<SUP>22</SUP> was sending us memos from the edge of consciousness
long before consciousness even had a bandwagon to jump on.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF107"></A><A NAME="_Ref109717417"></A>
It might be easier to list the people who <I>haven't</I> taken a stab
at &quot;explaining&quot; consciousness. Theories run the gamut from
diffuse electrical fields to quantum puppet-shows; consciousness has
been &quot;located&quot; in the frontoinsular cortex and the
hypothalamus and a hundred dynamic cores in between<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote100anc" HREF="#sdfootnote100sym"><SUP>100</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote101anc" HREF="#sdfootnote101sym"><SUP>101</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote102anc" HREF="#sdfootnote102sym"><SUP>102</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote103anc" HREF="#sdfootnote103sym"><SUP>103</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote104anc" HREF="#sdfootnote104sym"><SUP>104</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote105anc" HREF="#sdfootnote105sym"><SUP>105</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote106anc" HREF="#sdfootnote106sym"><SUP>106</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote107anc" HREF="#sdfootnote107sym"><SUP>107</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote108anc" HREF="#sdfootnote108sym"><SUP>108</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote109anc" HREF="#sdfootnote109sym"><SUP>109</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote110anc" HREF="#sdfootnote110sym"><SUP>110</SUP></A></SUP>.
(At least one theory<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote111anc" HREF="#sdfootnote111sym"><SUP>111</SUP></A></SUP>
suggests that while great apes and adult Humans are sentient, young
Human children are not. I admit to a certain fondness for this
conclusion; if childen <I>aren't</I> nonsentient, they're certainly
psychopathic).</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%"><A NAME="_RefF112"></A><A NAME="_Ref109730028"></A>
But beneath the unthreatening, superficial question of what
consciousness <I>is</I> floats the more functional question of what
it's good for. <I>Blindsight </I>plays with that issue at length,
and I won't reiterate points already made. Suffice to say that, at
least under routine conditions, consciousness does little beyond
taking memos from the vastly richer subconcious environment,
rubber-stamping them, and taking the credit for itself. In fact, the
nonconscious mind usually works so well on its own that it actually
employs a gatekeeper in the anterious cingulate cortex to do nothing
but <I>prevent</I> the conscious self from interfering in daily
operations<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote112anc" HREF="#sdfootnote112sym"><SUP>112</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote113anc" HREF="#sdfootnote113sym"><SUP>113</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote114anc" HREF="#sdfootnote114sym"><SUP>114</SUP></A></SUP>.
(If the rest of your brain <I>were</I> conscious, it would probably
regard you as the pointy-haired boss from <I>Dilbert</I>.)</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Sentience isn't even necessary to develop a &quot;theory of mind&quot;.
That might seem completely counterintuitive: how could you learn to
recognise that other individuals are autonomous agents, with their
own interests and agendas, if you weren't even aware of your own?
But there's no contradiction, and no call for consciousness. It is
entirely possible to track the intentions of others without being the
slightest bit self-reflective<SUP>107</SUP>. Norretranders declared
outright that &quot;Consciousness is a fraud&quot;<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote115anc" HREF="#sdfootnote115sym"><SUP>115</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Art might be a bit of an exception. Aesthetics seem to require some
level of self-awareness—in fact, the evolution of aethestics
might even be what got the whole sentience ball rolling in the first
place. When music is so beautiful if makes you shiver, that's the
reward circuitry in your limbic system kicking in: the same
circuitry that rewards you for fucking an attractive partner or
gorging on sucrose<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote116anc" HREF="#sdfootnote116sym"><SUP>116</SUP></A></SUP>.
It's a hack, in other words; your brain has learned how to get the
reward without actually earning it through increased fitness<SUP>98</SUP>.
It feels good, and it fulfills us, and it makes life worth living.
But it also turns us inward and distracts us. Those rats back in the
sixties, the ones that learned to stimulate their own pleasure
centers by pressing a lever: remember them? They pressed those
levers with such addictive zeal that they forgot to eat. They
starved to death. I've no doubt they died happy, but they <I>died</I>.
Without issue. Their fitness went to Zero.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Aesthetics. Sentience. Extinction.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
And that brings us to the final question, lurking way down in the
anoxic zone: the question of what consciousness <I>costs</I>.
Compared to nonconscious processing, self-awareness is slow and
expensive<SUP>112</SUP>. (The premise of a separate, faster entity
lurking at the base of our brains to take over in emergencies is
based on studies by, among others, Joe LeDoux of New York
University<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote117anc" HREF="#sdfootnote117sym"><SUP>117</SUP></A></SUP>&shy;<SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote118anc" HREF="#sdfootnote118sym"><SUP>118</SUP></A></SUP>).
By way of comparison, consider the complex, lightning-fast
calculations of savantes; those abilities are noncognitive<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote119anc" HREF="#sdfootnote119sym"><SUP>119</SUP></A></SUP>,
and there is evidence that they owe their superfunctionality not to
any overarching integration of mental processes but due to relative
neurological <I>fragmentation<SUP>4</SUP></I>. Even if sentient and
nonsentient processes were equally efficient, the conscious awareness
of visceral stimuli—by its very nature— distracts the
individual from other threats and opportunities in its environment.
(I was quite proud of myself for that insight. You'll understand
how peeved I was to discover that Wegner had already made a similar
point back in 1994<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote120anc" HREF="#sdfootnote120sym"><SUP>120</SUP></A></SUP>.)
The cost of high intelligence has even been demonstrated by
experiments in which smart fruit flies lose out to dumb ones when
competing for food<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote121anc" HREF="#sdfootnote121sym"><SUP>121</SUP></A></SUP>,
possibly because the metabolic demands of learning and memory leave
less energy for foraging. No, I haven't forgotten that I've just
spent a whole book arguing that intelligence and sentience are
different things. But this is still a relevant experiment, because
one thing both attributes do have in common is that they are
metabolically <I>expensive</I>. (The difference is, in at least some
cases intelligence is worth the price. What's the survival value of
obsessing on a sunset?)
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and
drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and
wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than
it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural
selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably
right. I hope they are. <I>Blindsight</I> is a thought experiment,
a game of <I>Just suppose</I> and <I>What if</I>. Nothing more.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used
exactly the same argument to prove their own superiority, a thousand
years ago: <I> if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?</I>
Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role.
The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily
the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The
game is <I>never</I> over; there's no finish line this side of heat
death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only
those who haven't yet lost.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Cunningham's stats about self-recognition in primates: those too are
real. Chimpanzees have a higher brain-to-body ratio than
orangutans<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote122anc" HREF="#sdfootnote122sym"><SUP>122</SUP></A></SUP>,
yet orangs consistently recognise themselves in mirrors while chimps
do so only half the time<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote123anc" HREF="#sdfootnote123sym"><SUP>123</SUP></A></SUP>.
Similarly, those nonhuman species with the most sophisticated
language skills are a variety of birds and monkeys—not the
presumably &quot;more sentient&quot; great apes who are our closest
relatives<SUP>81, </SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote124anc" HREF="#sdfootnote124sym"><SUP>124</SUP></A></SUP>.
If you squint, facts like these suggest that sentience might almost
be a phase, something that orangutans haven't yet grown out of but
which their more-advanced chimpanzee cousins are beginning to.
(Gorillas don't self-recognise in mirrors. Perhaps they've already
grown out of sentience, or perhaps they never grew into it.)</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Of course, Humans don't fit this pattern. If it even is a pattern.
We're outliers: that's one of the points I'm making.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
I bet vampires would fit it, though. That's the other one.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
Finally, some very timely experimental support for this unpleasant
premise came out just as <I>Blindsight</I><SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal">
was being copy edited: it turns out that the unconscious mind is
better at making complex decisions than is the conscious mind<A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote125anc" HREF="#sdfootnote125sym"><SUP>125</SUP></A>.
The conscious mind just can't handle as many variables, apparently.
Quoth one of the researchers: “At some point in our evolution,
we started to make decisions consciously, and we're not very good at
it.”<A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote126anc" HREF="#sdfootnote126sym"><SUP>126</SUP></A></SPAN></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western"><b>Miscellaneous Ambience (Background
Details, Bad Wiring, and the Human Condition)</b></P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The child Siri Keeton was not unique: we've been treating certain
severe epilepsies by radical hemispherectomy for over fifty years
now<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote127anc" HREF="#sdfootnote127sym"><SUP>127</SUP></A></SUP>.
Surprisingly, the removal of half a brain doesn't seem to impact IQ
or motor skills all that much (although most of hemispherectomy
patients, unlike Keeton, have low IQs to begin with)<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote128anc" HREF="#sdfootnote128sym"><SUP>128</SUP></A></SUP>
. I'm still not entirely sure why they <I>remove</I> the hemisphere;
why not just split the corpus callosum, if all you're trying to do is
prevent a feedback loop between halves? Do they scoop out one half
to prevent alien hand syndrome—and if so, doesn't that imply
that they're knowingly destroying a sentient personality?</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The maternal-response opioids that Helen Keeton used to kickstart
mother-love in her damaged son was inspired by recent work on
attachment-deficit disorders in mice<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote129anc" HREF="#sdfootnote129sym"><SUP>129</SUP></A></SUP>.
The iron-scavenging clouds that appear in the wake of the Firefall
are based on those reported by Plane <I>et al</I>.<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote130anc" HREF="#sdfootnote130sym"><SUP>130</SUP></A></SUP>.
I trawled The Gang of Four's linguistic jargon from a variety of
sources<SUP>81, </SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote131anc" HREF="#sdfootnote131sym"><SUP>131</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote132anc" HREF="#sdfootnote132sym"><SUP>132</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote133anc" HREF="#sdfootnote133sym"><SUP>133</SUP></A></SUP>.
The multilingual speech patterns of <I>Theseus</I>' crew (described
but never quoted, thank God) were inspired by the musings of
Graddol<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote134anc" HREF="#sdfootnote134sym"><SUP>134</SUP></A></SUP>,
who suggests that science must remain conversant in multiple
grammars because language leads thought, and a single &quot;universal&quot;
scientific language would constrain the ways in which we view the
world.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
The antecedent of Szpindel's and Cunningham's extended phenotypes
exists today, in the form of one Matthew Nagel<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote135anc" HREF="#sdfootnote135sym"><SUP>135</SUP></A></SUP>.
The spliced prosthetics that allow them to synesthetically perceive
output from their lab equipment hails from the remarkable plasticity
of the brain's sensory cortices: you can turn an auditory cortex
into a visual one by simply splicing the optic nerve into the
auditory pathways (if you do it early enough)<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote136anc" HREF="#sdfootnote136sym"><SUP>136</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote137anc" HREF="#sdfootnote137sym"><SUP>137</SUP></A></SUP>.
Bates' carboplatinum augments have their roots in the recent
development of metal musculature<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote138anc" HREF="#sdfootnote138sym"><SUP>138</SUP></A></SUP>&shy;&shy;<SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote139anc" HREF="#sdfootnote139sym"><SUP>139</SUP></A></SUP>.
Sascha's ironic denigration of TwenCen psychiatry hails not only
from (limited) personal experience, but from a pair of papers<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote140anc" HREF="#sdfootnote140sym"><SUP>140</SUP></A></SUP><SUP>,
</SUP><SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote141anc" HREF="#sdfootnote141sym"><SUP>141</SUP></A></SUP>
that strip away the mystique from cases of so-called <I>multiple
personality disorder</I>. (Not that there's anything wrong with the
concept; merely with its diagnosis.) The fibrodysplasia variant that
kills Chelsea was based on symptoms described by Kaplan <I>et al</I>.<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote142anc" HREF="#sdfootnote142sym"><SUP>142</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
And believe it or not, those screaming faces Sarasti used near the
end of the book represent a very real form of statistical analysis:
Chernoff Faces<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote143anc" HREF="#sdfootnote143sym"><SUP>143</SUP></A></SUP>,
which are more effective than the usual graphs and statistical tables
at conveying the essential characteristics of a data set<SUP><A CLASS="sdfootnoteanc" NAME="sdfootnote144anc" HREF="#sdfootnote144sym"><SUP>144</SUP></A></SUP>.</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-US" CLASS="western" STYLE="text-align:justify; font-weight: medium; line-height: 100%">
<BR>
</P>

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<br><br><br><hr width="100%" color="#00000"><br><br><br>

<DIV ID="sdfootnote1">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote1sym" HREF="#sdfootnote1anc">1</A>
http://www.rifters.com/blindsight/vampires.htm</P>
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote2">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote2sym" HREF="#sdfootnote2anc">2</A>
Pennish, E. 2003. Cannibalism and prion disease may have been
rampant in ancient humans. <I>Science</I> 300: 227-228.</P>
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<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote3sym" HREF="#sdfootnote3anc">3</A>
Mead, S. <I>et al.</I> 2003. Balancing Selection at the Prion
Protein Gene Consistent with Prehistoric Kurulike Epidemics.
<I>Science</I> 300: 640-643.</P>
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<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote4sym" HREF="#sdfootnote4anc">4</A>
Anonymous., 2004. Autism: making the connection. <I>The Economist</I>,
372(8387): 66.</P>
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote5">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote5sym" HREF="#sdfootnote5anc">5</A>
Balter, M. 2002. Ehat made Humans modern? <I>Science</I> 295:
1219-1225.</P>
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<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote6sym" HREF="#sdfootnote6anc">6</A>
Blanco-Arias, P., C.A. Sargent, and N.A. Affara1. 2004. A
comparative analysis of the pig, mouse, and human PCDHX genes.
<I>Mammalian Genome</I>, 15(4): 296-306.</P>
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<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote7sym" HREF="#sdfootnote7anc">7</A>
Kreider MS, <I>et al.</I> 1990. Reduction of
thyrotropin-releasing hormone concentrations in central nervous
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote8">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote8sym" HREF="#sdfootnote8anc">8</A>
Cui, Y. <I>et al.</I> 1996. State-dependent changes of brain
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote9">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote9sym" HREF="#sdfootnote9anc">9</A>
Miller, K. 2004. Mars astronauts 'will hibernate for 50
million-mile journey in space'. News.telegraph.co.uk, 11/8/04.</P>
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote10">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote10sym" HREF="#sdfootnote10anc">10</A>
Calvin, W.H. 1990. The Cerebral Symphony: Seashore Reflections on
the Structure of Consciousness. 401pp. Bantam Books, NY.</P>
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote11">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote11sym" HREF="#sdfootnote11anc">11</A>
Pennisi, E. 2004. The first language? <I>Science</I> 303:
1319-1320.</P>
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<DIV ID="sdfootnote12">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote12sym" HREF="#sdfootnote12anc">12</A>
Recordings of Hadzane click-based phonemes can be heard at
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html</P>
</DIV>
<DIV ID="sdfootnote13">
<P LANG="en-GB" CLASS="sdfootnote-western"><A CLASS="sdfootnotesym" NAME="sdfootnote13sym" HREF="#sdfootnote13anc">13</A>
Ramachandran, V.S. 1990. pp346-360 in The Utilitarian Theory of
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</DIV>
<DIV ID="sdfootnote14">
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